


You can feel it on the way home

by StrikerEureka



Series: Precious metals [3]
Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Blow Jobs, Body Horror, Demon Shane Madej, Demonic Possession, Demons, Established Relationship, Ghost Hunters, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Paranormal, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-04 21:36:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 38,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15156122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrikerEureka/pseuds/StrikerEureka
Summary: Something has noticed Ryan and it isn’t content to just watch and wait. While Shane attempts to share his true sight with Ryan, things begin to quickly fall apart. Ryan thinks he’s losing his grip on reality and Shane takes entirely too long to figure out what’s really at play. They’re closer to one another than ever before, but it might not stay that way if they can’t beat what is coming for them.Shane holds his wrists with both hands, his touch strangely gentle. “I’m gonna get something to clean you up with.”“I don’t need to be cleaned up, I need you to tell me what the fuck that was,” Ryan says, getting increasingly louder as he speaks. “You said I was in danger,” he jabs at his own chest with a numb finger, “you could feel it.”“Yes.”“Whatwasthat?”Shane’s gaze searches his face and Ryan doesn’t look away; he feels like he’s on the edge of a mental break and Shane is giving him nothing to hold onto.Finally, Shane says, “A demon.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please don't read this if this is about you or your friends.
> 
> Here we go, the final demon Shane fic. Thank you to everyone who has supported this series and me while writing it. All of the comments have been so overwhelmingly encouraging, all of the kudos are appreciated, and all of the people that I’ve befriended on tumblr are so lovely.
> 
> Special thanks to Noora. 
> 
> So much love forever to Dasha for gifting me with the most INCREDIBLE piece of fanart I’ve ever seen. Seriously, [please look at this gorgeous, demonic Shane](http://daryshkart.tumblr.com/post/173741591669/demon-shane-for-ohvegeta-she-is-amazing-writer).
> 
>  **WARNING:** This fic contains brief flashbacks to the accident in the first installment of the series. In later chapters, it also contains a lot of blood, what I like to think is some decent (body) horror, and what could probably be seen as something like torture through demonic influence/possession. If you see something else that should be tagged, let me know.
> 
> I'm a sucker for a happy ending, though, so it'll be all right in the end.

When Ryan opens his eyes, barely an hour has passed since he and Shane collapsed into bed together. At first he doesn’t know what’s woken him, then he realizes that he’s absolutely sweating to death. He kicks his feet to push the blankets down, reveling in the cool burst of air on his skin, and tries to roll over onto his side. A heavy weight against his back keeps him pinned in place.

Blinking into the darkness, he’s confused for a moment before he realizes that that weight is breathing against the back of his neck and draped over half of his body. Ryan groans into his pillow and Shane’s arm winds more tightly around him.

“Stop moving,” Shane rumbles.

Ryan can feel the beating of Shane’s heart against his sweat-sticky skin and it feels surreal. It’s calming. He rubs at his face with one hand and tries to settle back down to sleep.

“Shane?” he asks.

“Hmm?”

“I’m hotter than all holy fuck, right now.”

Shane grumbles but pushes himself over, not entirely off of his back, but enough that Ryan feels like he isn’t going to drown in his own sweat. His boxer-briefs stick to his skin as he shifts, trying to make himself more comfortable.

“Better?”

“Yeah.”

Shane quickly settles again, and Ryan tries to as well. There’s a pulsing behind his eyes that follows the beat of his heart, making his head ache lightly. It’s probably what woke him. Ryan rubs at his face with the hand not trapped under Shane and his pillow, causing colors to burst behind his closed eyelids. 

After a moment, Shane’s hand slips out from under his chest and wraps around his wrist, halting the motion. Ryan just tries to breathe, suddenly very aware of the sound of his own breath in the quiet stillness of the room. The dull throbbing in his head starts to fade so quickly that it makes Ryan feel lightheaded. The sudden lack of pressure and the darkness of the room gives him an abrupt flash of memory, of him, hanging by his seatbelt in a totaled rental car.

He drags in a quick breath through his nose, forcing his eyes open, trying to focus in the dark as his heart beats rabbit fast against his ribcage. Shane lets go of his wrist and Ryan grabs blindly for it, pulling it in against his side.

“Sorry,” Shane murmurs, his voice barely above a whisper.

“’s okay,” Ryan tells him, resettling his head against the pillow.

The sheets rustle a bit as Shane lifts his head to press a kiss to the back of Ryan’s shoulder. He closes his eyes again as Shane gently pulls his hand free and sets it against Ryan’s side. The tips of his fingers press in and the inherent warmth that comes with his touch intensifies, seeping out into Ryan’s side.

“Don’t—“

“I won’t,” Shane interrupts him quietly. “Your back’s tense; I’m trying to loosen you up.”

Ryan can feel the heat of his own flush, creeping over his cheeks. “Don’t be weird,” he says as Shane moves his hand to the small of Ryan’s back. 

“That wasn’t even weird,” Shane murmurs half-heartedly, lips still touching his skin.

Ryan turns his face against the pillow and squeezes his eyes shut. He can feel the moment when the words click for Shane because his hand’s slow trek across Ryan’s back stops and Shane sets his chin on Ryan’s shoulder blade.

“Ryan,” he sing-songs. “you’re a dirty birdy.”

“Shut up, Shane. I can’t be held accountable for anything I say or think between the hours of two and six in the morning.”

Shane laughs quietly and Ryan can feel the vibration of it through his back, where Shane is still pressed against him. The hand on his flank slides down over his ass and squeezes. Ryan jerks and laughs, reaching back to swat at Shane’s arm, but he doesn’t let go.

“That is a hearty grip, you have there.”

“It’s certainly a handful.”

Ryan kicks his leg back and Shane relents, letting go and running his hand back up and down Ryan’s side again. The motion is soothing, the continued flow of heat over his back forcing his muscles to relax. Ryan closes his eyes again, lids feeling heavy, sleep pulling at him once more.

“You gonna sleep?” Ryan mumbles.

“After you, maybe.”

Ryan rubs at his nose and cracks his eyes open again. “That’s not fair.”

“I don’t need to sleep; you do,” Shane says, leaning down to press his mouth to the bump of vertebra between his shoulder blades.

The scratch of Shane’s stubble against his warm, bare skin is too good, sending sparks of want scattering through his low belly. He’s too tired to get hard right now, but he still presses his hips down against the bed. Shane huffs a quiet laugh against him, setting his teeth over the press of bone beneath them.

“Dick.”

“Mhmm.”

Shane’s hand skims down his side to his hip and then starts to worm its way between his body and the mattress. Ryan grabs his wrist before he can go any further. Shane lets Ryan guide him back up, with a light tug, and tuck his arm around him. 

“An orgasm would help you sleep,” Shane offers.

“I don’t need help falling asleep. You can get me off in the morning.”

Shane laughs. “Is that a promise?”

“My dick is all yours, after ten.”

Shane’s warm breath rushes across his back, making goosebumps break out in its wake. Ryan shivers and Shane’s overly-warm hand resumes its trek, mapping his skin. Ryan could drift off again, easily. He wants to, but he wants Shane to go back to sleep, too. It’s weird knowing that he’s just going to be up, staring at him in the dark and petting his back.

“Shane.”

“Yeah?”

“Tell me something.”

Shane’s hand pauses on the underside of his ribs. “Like what?”

Ryan shrugs a shoulder. “A mystery of the universe.”

“I don’t know many of those.”

“Bullshit,” Ryan grumbles.

“Your simple, human mind cannot fathom the mysteries that I know,” Shane says, affecting a lofty tone.

“If your little, pea brain can handle it, I think my puny human brain can.”

Shane’s hand starts moving again and Ryan fights to open his eyes. Before he can voice any sort of prompt or complaint, Shane clears his throat a little and says, “Ghosts are real.”

Ryan’s laugh is loud in the stillness of the room. He elbows Shane until he squirms away and Ryan can roll onto his back. Enough light is seeping in around his curtains that he can make out Shane’s insane bedhead. Ryan lays his hands on his own stomach and looks up at Shane in the dark.

“Why do they stay behind?”

“I don’t really know. Most of the ones I’ve encountered give off the impression of being lost.”

Something about that twists unpleasantly in Ryan’s chest. “What do you mean?”

Shane props his cheek up in his palm, looking down at him. “The ones that stay aren’t happy.”

“Like they have unfinished business or something?”

Shane wrinkles his nose. “I think that notion is a little Hollywood.”

“We live in LA.”

A hand covers Ryan’s mouth and he laughs against it.

“I think the new ones are confused because they’re always kind of stupid. Like they don’t know how to communicate yet.”

Ryan pulls Shane’s hand away from his mouth. “You think that’s why all the ghosts people see are from like Victorian times and shit?”

Shane shrugs. “Probably. The older they are, the more intelligent I think they are. But that could all be a load of bullshit because I only ever started speaking to them once I met you.”

A smile creeps over Ryan’s mouth, even though he tries to fight it back. “You started talking to ghosts for me?”

“Why the fuck else would I talk to them?”

“What do you say to them? _How_ do you talk to them?”

“I open my mouth and words come out.”

Ryan hopes that Shane’s vision is powerful enough to see the unimpressed look he offers in response. Judging by the fact that Shane leans over and kisses him, he thinks the point was received. 

“You have to be able to communicate with them silently.”

“I don’t know how to explain how that works to you.”

“What do you tell them?”

Shane lets out a heavy-sounding sigh through his nose and Ryan winds his hand around Shane’s wrist. 

“The older ones are the strong ones, and the strong ones are usually the angry ones.”

“You ever tell them to back off?”

“Usually I don’t have to.”

“One look at you and they go cry in the corner, huh?”

Shane tips his head to the side. “Yeah. Sort of like that.”

Ryan’s throat goes a little dry and tight. “I was kind of kidding.”

The silence between them stretches and Shane eventually lies back down beside him, settling his leg over Ryan’s. He’s like a giant cat, needing to partially smother Ryan whenever they get into bed together. But Ryan isn’t complaining. He will literally never be cold again in his life, so long as Shane is near him. 

Neither one of them speaks for so long that Ryan thinks that Shane has fallen asleep. He closes his eyes and lets out a breath, trying to clear his mind again. Ryan is close to dozing off when Shane speaks up again.

“Ryan?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you still want to try to use my sight?”

Ryan turns his head toward Shane’s, feeling his slow, even exhales coming against his cheek. “Yeah.”

Shane is quiet again and Ryan drifts closer to sleep. He almost thinks he imagines Shane’s quiet, “Okay,” before he’s dead to the world.

 

\--

 

Ryan wakes again in the watery dawn light to an empty bed. He opens his eyes to see Shane pulling on his jeans and tucking his phone into his back pocket.

“Where’re you going?” He slurs enough to sound like a drunken idiot but Shane seems to understand him well enough.

He leans over the bed and kisses Ryan on the mouth, heedless of his morning breath, and touches his cheek before standing up again. “I have to run home. Go back to sleep.”

Ryan pushes himself up on an elbow, doing pretty much the opposite of what Shane is telling him, and rubbing at his eyes with his other hand. His vision is blurry and the lack of light isn’t helping.

“Why?”

“Call me when you wake up,” Shane tells him, shrugging on last night’s wrinkled, plaid shirt and setting to work on the buttons. “I gotta go.”

“Shane—“

He leans over and kisses Ryan again before he practically flies out of the room.

Ryan considers getting up and following him, demanding to know what the fuck exactly, but sometimes Shane is still just fucking weird and it’s not worth it. Especially not when he can probably get an explanation out of him later. 

The front door opens and closes and Ryan hauls Shane’s pillow close and practically faceplants into it. He’ll figure it out when he wakes up again.

 

\--

 

When Ryan texts Shane that he’s awake, he gets back an address in response. There’s a certain flair for the dramatic that Shane can hide fairly well, but in the couple of months that have passed since Ryan learned the truth about him, he’s let it show increasingly more often. Ryan doesn’t question the silent instruction to meet him, just gets around and heads out to his car.

He kind of wishes that he had questioned it when he pulls up to visitor parking at a hospital and his phone tells him that he’s arrived.

“Arrived at fucking _what_?” he asks as he puts on his blinker and turns into the parking structure.

It’s early spring and the weather has only recently started to become what Ryan considers acceptable. Shane tells him constantly what a softie he is and how he doesn’t know anything about _real cold_. It was mildly annoying when he just thought that Shane was from the Midwest, but it’s become gravely offensive to him since he came to understand that Shane is literally burning up on the inside with fire straight from hell. Still, Ryan zips up his hoodie and grabs the black slouch hat that Shane left in his car, tugging it down over his hair. It’s getting too long, shaggy around his ears, but Shane likes to run his fingers through it so Ryan has let it grow, even though he’d rather have his tongue pulled out of his mouth than admit that.

There’s a bite to the breeze that has him hunching his shoulders as he jogs through the crosswalk, texting Shane as he goes.

_I’m here you fuckin weirdo._

_Not texting and driving I hope._

Ryan rolls his eyes as he heads up the sidewalk toward the front entrance. _Walking in now._

_Be right there._

Ryan keeps his phone in his hand as he steps inside the foyer, even as he thumbs it to silent. There is something unsettling about a hospital, even one as nice and bright as this, bustling with activity, with its clean marble entryway and blossoming potted plants. People die here, daily, and that fact cannot be ignored. It doesn’t matter how many brand new infants are taking their first breath over in the maternity ward, there is still someone in here who is probably going to die today. Multiple someones.

The seconds stretch and Ryan checks the time on his phone, stepping to the side, out of the way of incoming people. He lingers near the door, waiting to see Shane’s giant head come into view. 

After a couple of minutes Ryan unlocks his phone and texts him, _Where are you??_

“Glad you could make it.”

Ryan’s grateful that he’s able to hold back the literal yelp he wants to let loose, even if he jumps and barely avoids tossing his phone right out of his hand.

There’s an older woman, a little shorter than him, in a doctor’s lab coat, with a stethoscope wrapped around her neck, standing entirely too close. She’s looking directly at him but Ryan still looks on either side of himself to see if she might be speaking to someone else. He locks his phone and clears his throat, huffing out a laugh as he does.

“Uhh, hi?”

“Come on,” she says, nodding her head to the side.

“I uhh—I think you have me confused with someone else—“

She looks at him like she thinks he’s stupid. “It’s me.”

Ryan looks at the name stitched into her lab coat but he doesn’t recognize it anymore than he recognizes her face.

“I’m sorry, I really don’t—“

“ _Ryan_.”

The words die in his mouth. Something about it, the inflection, the tilt of the head, the look in her eye, fucking _something_ abruptly kicks things into place and Ryan just _knows_.

“ _Shane?_ ”

He doesn’t say it anywhere near as quiet as he should, and there are definitely some glances from passersby, as the doctor steps closer to him.

“Keep your voice down.”

Ryan feels like his eyes are going to melt out of his head or something. His heart kicks into overdrive and the rush of blood past his ears is so loud that it’s all he can hear in that moment. The doctor takes hold of his bicep in an unnaturally strong grip and guides him back outside.

The air is crisp and clean and dry and it hurts his lungs as he squats down on the sidewalk, with his back pressed into the unforgiving grate of the brick behind him, and takes several deep breaths. Something terrible and familiar presses down on his chest; the icy cold creep of fear across his shoulder, the surge of panic that makes him feel sick to his stomach. It literally takes his breath away. He almost falls over sideways when the doctor bends down beside him, setting a hot hand against his back.

Ryan’s mouth waters like he’s going to throw up.

“What are you doing?” he asks in a rushed whisper that goes increasingly higher in pitch. “Who the fuck is this?”

“She’s fine, Ryan.”

"You’re _possessing_ her!” he hisses

Shane—oh god, it’s Shane in there—looks over the doctor’s shoulder, but no one is nearby or paying attention to the two of them. “We’ve established that, now _shut up_. She’s fine. It’s like she’s sleeping; she doesn’t even know I’m in here.”

“Jesus christ, Shane.”

“How is this any different than me being in my other body?”

“Your other—that one’s _yours!_ There’s no one else _inside_ that one!”

Shane rolls his borrowed green eyes. “She won’t know I was ever in here, and the sooner you calm down, the sooner I can get out of here.”

“I am calm!”

“You’re freaking out and you need to be quiet,” Shane tells him seriously.

Ryan spits out some of the extra saliva in his mouth and closes his eyes, hiding his face in his hands. He wonders what they must look like to people coming and going from the hospital. Does he look like someone who’s just gotten really bad news? Or does he look like someone on the verge of an anxiety attack being comforted by his demon-boyfriend who is possessing a doctor?

“Where’s your body?” he asks when he drops his hands again.

Shane shifts beside him, his hand rubbing circles against his back. It’s ordinarily something that Ryan likes, but right now it feels weird coming from someone else’s hands. He draws his shoulders up and Shane pulls his hand away, not touching him at all.

“In my apartment.”

“Jesus christ,” he says again, swallowing back the nausea creeping up his throat. “It’s just—is it okay?”

"It’s fine. I’ve barely left it since I took control of it but it’s like riding a bike, I guess.”

Ryan shakes his head, still feeling a little frantic; his hands are shaking. “I mean is it…” there is definitely bile in his throat when he clears it and it burns like hell, “is it, like, it’s not _decaying_ or anything, is it? How long can you be away from it?”

“It won’t start to decay unless I’m gone for too long.”

That should probably be comforting but it’s really not.

“What is the point of this?”

“I want to show you what I see.”

“How is _this_ accomplishing that?”

“Well, we’re not accomplishing anything right now.”

Ryan jabs a finger at him. “Don’t you dare try to—this is fucked up, Shane. Any normal person would freak out in this situation. Don’t say I’m overreacting.”

"I didn’t say that."

“You’re thinking it.”

Shane sighs. “Okay. Fine. Bad idea. I didn’t think it would bother you.”

“It does.”

“Noted. But it’s already done and we’re already here. Let’s not waste it.” Shane stands up and offers him a hand.

Ryan still isn’t sure that he’s not going to throw up but he takes Shane’s hand and gets to his feet; his knees feel like they’ve been replaced with jelly. He spits again, wiping at his mouth with the side of his hand. He doesn’t know what Shane is planning to do next, because he isn’t saying anything and he isn’t moving, either. He’s just standing there, looking at Ryan.

“Why did you bring me here?”

Shane glances back toward the doors. “New spirits are easier,” he says, keeping his voice down. “They can’t communicate for shit but they’re brighter. Old spirits are stronger but new ones are easier to see.”

“You’re gonna show me fresh hospital spirits?”

"You said you wanted to see what I see.”

Ryan bites his lips. “I do.”

“Then this is the best place to start.”

Honestly, Ryan doesn’t know if he can go through with this. Neither he nor Shane know if it’s even possible for Shane to share his sight through their link. Ryan wants to try; he wants to know what Shane sees when his eyes go black. He wants to know. He wants to be that close to Shane.

Wiping his clammy palms on his thighs, Ryan meets Shane’s eyes and nods. “Okay.” He says it again, to himself, “Okay.”

Shane holds his arm out and Ryan takes a breath and starts walking. He doesn’t shy away from the hand on his back, this time, allowing Shane to guide him back through the automatic doors and into the foyer.

“Question,” Ryan says as he sets as nonchalant a pace as possible.

“Yeah?” Shane asks, swiping the doctor’s hospital ID to open a locked door.

“How’s the weather down there?”

Shane pauses just as the doors close and lock behind them, glancing up at Ryan. He can’t bite back the grin that pulls at his cheeks. Shane holds his gaze until Ryan laughs, loud and inappropriate and half smothered behind his own hand. There’s a smile on Shane’s face when he starts walking again; Ryan follows on his heels.

They don’t go far before Shane stops them in the hallway and turns to face him. A tall blonde woman in flower print scrubs walks by them, giving Ryan a strange look as she passes. Ryan is nervous beyond words that someone is going to ask him what the fuck he’s doing just standing around, back here. There’s really no telling what kind of influence Shane actually has on their surroundings or other people and it’s making Ryan even more nervous because he doesn’t know what the fuck is going on with any of this.

“Focus,” Shane says, “look at me.” Ryan takes a breath to steel his nerves (which doesn’t work at all) and meets Shane’s eyes.

“What am I focusing on?”

Shane glances to his left and Ryan wants to follow his line of sight but he keeps looking at the borrowed doctor’s face.

“Disclaimer: I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“That’s comforting.”

Shane takes hold of his wrist and his whole arm immediately goes hot. He has to fight not to jerk away from the grip.

“There’s one nearby.”

Ryan’s heart skips a beat or two. “Okay.”

Shane looks over to the left again and this time Ryan does too. He doesn’t see anything.

“It’s lost,” Shane says absently, like he’s zoned out. Ryan’s gaze flicks back to him and his eyes are glassy and dark, but not black.

“What do you mean lost?”

Shane continues to stare off without answering or acknowledging him. Ryan turns again, trying to approximate where Shane is looking but his arm is so goddamn hot, it feels like it’s about to burst into flames or his skin is going to melt off. He grits his teeth as his eyes begin to water.

“It’s cold. Do you feel it?” Shane shakes his head. “It won’t last.”

“Fucking—Shane, my _arm_ —“

Shane just hums a sound and tips his head to the side. “ _Look_ , Ryan.”

Sweat prickles along his hairline and the back of his neck. He can’t focus on _anything_ but Shane trying to set him on fire, or whatever the fuck he’s doing. The scorching pain becomes too great and Ryan finally yanks against the hold Shane has on him, but he can’t pull free.

“ _Shane_ , jesus fuck."

Finally, Shane blinks and looks at him, letting him go instantly. Ryan’s arm shakes, his fingers are bright red and numb, his temples damp with beading sweat. He looks at Shane, who puts his palm on Ryan’s bicep and the rush of relief is instant, if not entirely effective. The pain lingers a little, warming his joints and making him ache.

“What the fuck was that?”

Shane shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I was trying to show you. Connect through the link we made. Obviously that method doesn’t work.”

“No shit,” Ryan mumbles, cradling his sore arm against his chest.

“I’m sorry,” Shane says again.

Ryan shakes his head. “It’s fine. Trial and error and all that.” He looks over his shoulder. “Is it gone?”

“Yeah,” Shane says with a nod. “Some of them find their way pretty quickly. But there are a lot of them here. We can try again, if you want."

Ryan still feels a bit sick to his stomach, looking at this woman that Shane is possessing. He doesn’t like hospitals, to begin with, and knowing that there are freshly-dead spirits wandering their way toward the light near him, is really making his skin crawl. He doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like anything about this.

“I think… I wanna go home.”

__Shane takes a breath, like he wants to say something, but he just lets it out again and nods._ _

__“Okay.”_ _

__“Is it cool if I come over?” Ryan asks, feeling a little weird about it and he doesn’t quite know why. Probably because Shane is currently dressed wearing a mid-forty something, female doctor, and not towering over him like the circus freak that he is._ _

__Shane nods. “Yeah. I’ll just… put this back on the rack and head home.”_ _

__Ryan’s laugh is probably just as inappropriate as it feels. “I hate even more that you’re not a guy because I can’t hit you, right now.”_ _

__“Stop the violence, Ry,” Shane says, sagely._ _

__“Will you—will you, you know,” Ryan gestures uselessly at him, “make it back to your place? Before I do? Because I gotta tell you, finding your uninhabited body is probably up there in my top three worst fears, now.”_ _

__“Top _three?_ ” Shane arches his eyebrows in a way that looks so totally like his actual self that it makes Ryan’s head hurt. He blinks and shakes his head._ _

__“We can talk about my greatest fears in life when you’re back in your own body and I’m five beers deep into forgetting that this ever happened.”_ _

__Shane looks like he wants to say something, again, but he just nods and pats Ryan on the back._ _

__“I’ll beat you home. I promise.”_ _

__“Okay,” Ryan says, but it’s mostly a whisper as Shane turns and heads in the opposite direction, leaving him standing there in a hospital hallway._ _

__Ryan just tries to keep his head down as he goes back the way they came in. He’s grateful that they never made any confusing turns and he only has to go through one door to get back to the atrium. The air is immediately easier to breathe; with natural light coming in through the windows, the atmosphere less oppressive. Ryan takes a breath and holds it until his lungs burn._ _

__The throbbing in his arm kicks up another notch when he runs into someone coming into through the doors as he’s leaving. He apologizes and receives a nod from the older man he’d run into and keeps walking. The pressure that had built up in his head last night comes on again, building quickly; so much so that he doesn’t even realize that he has a full-blown migraine until he’s trying to get his keys out of his pocket and he drops them on the ground._ _

__Ryan’s hands are shaking, and the pain in his arm and his head are just too much. He barely has time to turn away from his car before he’s throwing up._ _

__It’s disgusting and it burns because he hadn’t eaten anything before coming to meet Shane, and he has nothing but watered down bile to vomit all over the ground._ _

__He braces himself between his car and the one beside it, both of his arms shaking, and sweat beading at his temples. It’s gross and it hurts his throat, but he does feel a little better once it passes. He fumbles the car door open and reaches for the half-empty bottle of water in the console. A quick swish and he spits onto the mess on the pavement and climbs into his car._ _

__Ryan really hopes that no one has to get in on that side of the other car._ _

__It takes a moment before Ryan feels like he can actually drive. He takes the time where he’s just breathing and blinking tears out of his eyes to roll his sleeve up and examine his arm. The skin around his wrist, where Shane had held onto him, is fire red and tender to the touch._ _

__There’s no denying that it’s a burn, and a bad one at that. He has half a mind to get out of his car and head back into the hospital to get it looked at, but he figures that Shane can probably help him out with it. Or at the very least get him some burn salve._ _

__Ryan pulls his sleeve back down and picks his keys up out of his lap to start the car. A drop of blood lands on his thigh and he freezes._ _

__“The fuck,” he murmurs to himself._ _

__The coppery tang of iron fills his nose and mouth; he can taste it. He reaches up to touch his nose and his fingers come away bloody. Angling the rearview mirror toward himself, he can see blood seeping out of his right nostril and down over his cupid’s bow where it beads, ready to drip again._ _

__“Shit.” He reaches over and opens the glove compartment where he keeps a healthy stash of In ‘n Out napkins, and tears a strip off of one and stuffs it directly into his nostril, effectively plugging it up._ _

__“Could one more goddamn thing happen to me?” he mutters, wiping in vain at the blood already staining the inseam of his jeans. “Almost wore black. Didn’t wear black.” He tosses the partially shredded napkin into the passenger seat and tugs on his seatbelt. “Always wear black, Bergara. Just learn the fucking lesson.”_ _

__He continues berating himself as he readjusts the rearview mirror, catching a glimpse of himself, pale and sweaty, with a bloody napkin shoved in his nose. Ryan pauses a moment, feeling the muted throbbing in his arm, the ache in his head, and the burn in the back of his throat._ _

__“Then go see your demon boyfriend looking like death and a pile of dog shit had a baby. Great. Perfect.” He puts the car in reverse and backs out of the spot. “Fucking awesome. What a catch.”_ _

__He gripes to himself the entire twenty-two-minute drive to Shane’s apartment._ _

__

__\--_ _

__

__The relief that Ryan feels when Shane answers the door in his own skin, is monumental. He lets out a breath he wasn’t conscious of holding and steps over the threshold._ _

__“What happened?” Shane asks, steadying him when he wobbles, trying to take off his shoes._ _

__“Nothing.”_ _

__“You’re all sweaty. And pale.”_ _

__“And my arm is on fucking fire from where you burned me, too. You wanna talk about that?”_ _

__Shane is quiet for a beat and Ryan looks up at him, feeling a curl of regret in his stomach at the wording. Shane holds out his hand. “Let me see,” he says quietly._ _

__Ryan sighs and runs an unsteady hand through his hair; it’s still damp with sweat at the roots._ _

__“It’s not that bad,” he says, holding out his arm and letting Shane carefully fold his sleeve up to his elbow. His hands are gentle as they move over Ryan’s inflamed skin. It’s tender and sore and Ryan can see his hand shaking, even though he doesn’t really feel it._ _

__“I can heal this,” Shane tells him, his voice serious and quiet._ _

__Ryan allows himself to be lead into the living room, and sits down on the couch. Shane sits beside him and takes hold of his arm again, turning it so he can see the worst of the burn; the point where his palm made contact with Ryan’s skin._ _

__Ryan can’t stop watching Shane’s face. Anger and upset play across his features like they’re vying to be the dominant emotion of the moment. Ryan curls his fingers around Shane’s forearm and draws his gaze up. His eyes are so fucking sad that Ryan almost can’t stand it._ _

__“It’s okay,” he says, the words coming out as a whisper in the tense air between them. “It was an accident, right?”_ _

__“You know I’d never hurt you on purpose.” Shane says it the way he always does, like a knee-jerk reaction to Ryan questioning him._ _

__“Yeah. I know. Quit moping and fix me.”_ _

__Shane huffs a breath and leans over to kiss him. It’s slow and sweet, Ryan reaching up to touch his stubbled cheek with his free hand, before Shane pulls back. Heat creeps over the back of his neck when Shane grabs his wrist, as his hand falls away, and presses a kiss to his fingertips._ _

__“Gettin’ soft, demon boy.” Ryan laughs at the look that Shane gives him, and then shakes his arm. “Focus.”_ _

__Shane sits upright and wraps both hands around Ryan’s wrist. For a moment, Ryan feels absolutely nothing, his eyes flicking up to Shane to see his expression. Then there’s a sudden rush of cold that is so abrupt and frigid that it almost hurts. His entire body jerks and every inch of skin breaks out in goosebumps._ _

__“Jesus christ, what the fuck?”_ _

__The words are barely out of his mouth when the sensation stops. Ryan lets out a breath that he’s surprised he can’t see, with how cold he is. Shane opens his hands and Ryan’s skin is almost entirely healed. A small patch, no bigger than a half-dollar, remains, pink like new skin. Shane touches it with his thumbs._ _

__“It might scar,” he says, sounding apologetic._ _

__“It’s fine. I can start wearing a watch or something,” Ryan says, shaking himself a little as the familiar warmth that comes from Shane’s touch begins seeping in again. “That was really fucking cold.”_ _

__Shane looks uncharacteristically tired as he leans back against the couch cushions, still holding Ryan’s wrist. Ryan folds his knee under him and sits facing Shane._ _

__“Your head was the most complex thing I’ve ever tried to heal before.”_ _

__“Did a good job.” Ryan lightly raps his knuckles against his own temple. “Still good as new.”_ _

__Shane smiles softly at him. “This was easier but different. I tried to take the heat back.”_ _

__“Did that pretty good, too.” Ryan flexes his fingers and Shane nods at him. “But, uh, I think we need to talk about the whole… possession thing.”_ _

__“I made an incorrect assumption about what you’d be comfortable with.”_ _

__“You should have _told_ me instead of just running off to do it.”_ _

__“I don’t know what the best way to tap into this link is,” Shane says, pointing between the two of them. “I’ve never created one before. Everything I’m doing is just me trying to make it work. If you want to use my sight then there’s probably going to be a few hiccups along the way.”_ _

__Ryan rubs at his face. “You call possessing a doctor at a hospital and then scaring the absolute shit out of me a _hiccup_?” _ _

__“I didn’t think it would bother you this much.”_ _

__“Well, it did.”_ _

__“I’m aware,” Shane says, his voice going tense._ _

__Ryan knows that he probably shouldn’t be harping on Shane so hard, but he can’t help it. The whole ordeal, back at the hospital, was too hard of a mindfuck, knowing that Shane had abandoned this body, the body that Ryan knows and loves, to actually take control of someone else._ _

__“It scared me,” he admits, quietly._ _

__Shane closes his eyes for a moment. “I didn’t intend to scare you.”_ _

__“Promise me you won’t do that again.”_ _

__“Do what? Scare you?”_ _

__“Don’t be a dick; you know what I mean. Promise me you won’t _possess_ other people.”_ _

__Shane looks at him for a long moment before he says, “No.”_ _

__Ryan’s brow furrows. “What do you mean ‘no’?”_ _

__“I mean _no_. I’m not going to promise you that.”_ _

__“Why not?” Ryan feels indignant._ _

__“Because if there ever comes a time that I _need_ to leave this body and find another one, I won’t be able to do that, if I enter into a deal with you, so long as you’re alive.”_ _

__Ryan almost feels like he’s been slapped, for how stunned he feels. “It would—it’s not a deal, though,” he says, stumbling through the sentence._ _

__“A promise to you would be a deal.”_ _

__“I’m not giving you anything, though.”_ _

__“You give me your trust.”_ _

__Ryan feels a little nauseated, his stomach still iffy from the parking structure, and his head is starting to hurt again. “Sounds like a shitty trade, for you.”_ _

__Shane’s fingertips touch his temple and the ache there lifts immediately. Ryan takes a grateful inhale._ _

__“What’s with the headaches, all of a sudden?” Shane asks, leaving the possession topic behind, entirely._ _

__“Huh?”_ _

__“You’ve had a lot of headaches lately. And a nosebleed.”_ _

__“How did you know about that?” Ryan had left the bloody napkins balled up in his cup holder in the car._ _

__Shane swipes his thumb under Ryan’s nose and holds it up between them, wet with fresh blood._ _

__“Goddamnit,” Ryan mutters, reaching up to cup his hand under his nose, as he levers himself up off the couch._ _

__The tender nerves in his wrist ache with the loss of Shane’s touch but he really doesn’t want to get any more blood on himself. He flicks on the bathroom light and turns on the cold water, leaning over the sink to let his nose drip into it for a moment while he stares at his less-than-appealing reflection. He looks like shit._ _

__The hall closet opens and closes and then Shane appears behind him with a light gray washcloth. “Here,” he says, running it under the water and wringing it out._ _

__Ryan shakes his head even as Shane draws him up and presses the cloth against his nose._ _

__“It’ll stain,” he mumbles, his voice muffled under the damp fabric._ _

__“It’s a washcloth,” Shane says, letting Ryan take over holding it for him. “Don’t tip your head back.”_ _

__“I’ve had a bloody nose before,” Ryan grumbles, setting his head back and leaning against the wall._ _

__“Today, apparently.”_ _

__There’s something vaguely accusatory in those words that Ryan lifts an eyebrow at. Shane has his arms folded, propped up against the doorframe, casual as can be._ _

__“Yeah.”_ _

__“You were sick.”_ _

__“Yeah, and I took a shit this morning, too. Am I required to report all of my bodily functions to you, now?” Ryan feels suddenly defensive and irritable and he doesn’t know why. “How can you even tell that I puked?”_ _

__Shane eyes him for a moment, unimpressed with his mini-outburst. “You smell sick.”_ _

__“I _smell_ sick? You can smell that, now?”_ _

__“My senses are different than yours and I’m especially dialed into you.”_ _

__“Creep.”_ _

__Shane shakes his head and pushes off the doorframe, leaving Ryan alone in the bathroom with his nosebleed. He thumps his head back against the wall a couple of times. “Idiot,” Ryan mutters to himself, closing his eyes._ _

__Ryan waits in the bathroom until his nose stops bleeding. It takes several long minutes of avoiding eye contact with himself in the mirror, silently contemplating how complicated this thing with Shane is becoming, before it stops. He rinses out the washcloth the best he can and leaves it spread out to dry on the edge of the counter._ _

__He finds Shane standing in the living room with his arms folded, looking out the window. Ryan feels like a kid who’s just gotten in trouble and is afraid to approach his parents. He hesitates, picking at the top of the comfy chair that sits kitty-corner to the couch. It doesn’t face the TV and Ryan has been griping at Shane to move it ever since he first set foot in his apartment. He thinks Shane leaves it where it is just to annoy him._ _

__“Stop lurking and come here,” Shane tells him without turning around._ _

__Ryan heaves a sigh and makes his way over. Shane turns to look at him, the knuckle of one finger coming up to rest under his chin as he turns Ryan’s head a bit to each side, for inspection. He looks back out the window._ _

__“I can sense a lot of things about you, especially with the bond that we have, now.” An excited, little shiver works its way down Ryan’s spine at the words. Shane has always referred to it as a _link_ before, never a _bond_ , and the subtle shift makes Ryan’s heart beat just the slightest bit harder._ _

__“I know.”_ _

__“I don’t know _everything_ though. Even if I can tell something’s off, with you, I might not know what.”_ _

__“I’m allowed to have secrets, Shane,” Ryan says, but it’s quiet and not at all angry or accusatory._ _

__Shane turns to him. “I’m not saying that you need to tell me every single thing, but something that can hurt you, I need to know about.”_ _

__“I don’t know what you mean.” Shane lifts a finger but Ryan works it out before it touches him. “It’s just a nosebleed.”_ _

__“And a headache and vomiting.”_ _

__“You just burned the shit out of my arm. It hurt. I threw up. Boom, end of story,” Ryan says, holding out his hands. “Moving on.”_ _

__A heavy arm curls around his shoulders and Ryan turns into it, letting Shane pull them together. He sets his hands on Shane’s sides and closes his eyes, pressing up onto his toes a bit to set his chin on Shane’s shoulder. A nose presses into his hair and he hears Shane’s deep inhale. He cringes a little, inwardly, knowing how bad he was sweating earlier and what his hair might smell like, now. Shane doesn’t say anything, just sets his cheek on top of Ryan’s head and holds him there._ _

__“You gotta give me something when it comes to you possessing people,” Ryan says, quietly._ _

__Shane takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, ruffling Ryan’s hair. Clearly, the wording is important so he stays quiet and lets Shane think._ _

__When Shane does speak, it’s intentionally vague, leaving loopholes that even Ryan can see, but he understands the necessity for it._ _

__“I’ll only possess another body if I tell you in advance or if necessity dictates it.”_ _

__Ryan mulls it over for a second before he says, “Thank you.”_ _

__

__\--_ _

__

__With the show on hiatus again, Ryan spends most of his days at work doing research and getting his shit together for the next season. He has his budget approved and his list of new locations mostly completed, and the first episode’s narration outline ready to be handed over to the writers. He’s feeling good about it, ready to get into the recording booth and put on his theory voice._ _

__Shane taps his arm and Ryan pulls off his headphones, setting them around his neck when Shane scoots his chair closer._ _

__“I had an idea.”_ _

__Ryan lifts his eyebrows, glancing at Shane’s computer screens but both are only showing his desktop._ _

__“Yeah?”_ _

__“I want to try sharing a memory with you.”_ _

__“What?” Ryan asks, half-laughing._ _

__Shane taps his chest, just to the left of his sternum, twice before it clicks into place. Ryan looks around but no one is paying attention to them. He lowers his voice and leans on the armrest of his chair to angle himself as close as he can without making it look weird._ _

__“Is this really the place to talk about it?” he asks, voice barely above a whisper._ _

__Shane glances up, looking right and left, before at Ryan again. He pushes his chair back and stands, setting his own headphones down beside his keyboard._ _

__“Come on,” he says._ _

__Ryan follows suit, taking his headphones off with slightly shaky hands and getting to his feet. He might as well have just committed a murder for how suspicious he feels, following Shane through the office. Logically he knows that nothing about him and Shane leaving together is weird or out of place, especially not when he knows that pictures of the two of them dancing together have made their way to Instagram. Everyone knows that there’s _something_ brewing between the two of them, but no one has made a big deal about it. He knows the playful barbs and dick sucking jokes are just lying in wait for everyone to get past the ‘respect their privacy’ stage. _ _

__Ryan doesn’t care about any of that, right now. He follows half a step behind Shane until he realizes that he’s being lead to the Unsolved studio. He has to hurry a little to match Shane’s long stride. He steps into the room and turns on the lights as Shane locks the door behind them._ _

__“If anyone saw us come in there they’re gonna think we snuck away for a quickie or something,” Ryan says, as Shane approaches him._ _

__There’s a smile lifting the corner of his mouth and a sharpness to his eyes that has Ryan backing up and his pulse starting to race. He bumps the table they sit at for Postmortem, and Shane ducks down to kiss him. Ryan puts his arms around Shane’s shoulders, and it’s a good thing he does, because a moment later, hands grip and lift the backs of his thighs and he’s set down on the table._ _

__“Holy shit,” Ryan laughs against Shane’s mouth. “I don’t think this is sturdy enough for any sort of sexual activity.”_ _

__Shane kisses him again, longer and wetter. Ryan groans softly as Shane’s tongue pushes into his mouth. He closes his eyes and holds onto Shane’s shoulders, because he’s pretty sure that Shane is still actually supporting more of his weight than the table is. A hand glides up his back, over the bumps of his spine, and pushes the hat off of his head._ _

__Ryan huffs a breath out his nose because he doesn’t want to pull away from Shane long enough to comment. The kiss stays slow, just the steady, wet slide of Shane’s tongue against his own that makes Ryan’s toes curl in his boots. Ryan pulls Shane closer, their chests pressed together, and he hooks one leg around Shane’s thigh to drag him in even further._ _

__Fuck, they really might be having a quickie in here. Ryan’s dick twitches at the thought. If that’s what Shane wants then he’s going to get it, pretty soon. Something about having his legs spread and Shane in between them, pressed up against him, really, really does it for Ryan._ _

__He breaks the kiss to suck in a shaky breath and whisper a heavy, “Fuck,” before diving back in._ _

__Shane must be trusting him to hold on because he lets go of Ryan’s thighs and runs them up over his sides, finger settling into the gaps between his ribs, for a moment. His touch is hot, already making Ryan’s shirt stick to his back. He grinds himself forward against Shane and listens to the devastated little huff of breath he releases. A hand slides down to his ass and pulls him in even closer._ _

__Ryan’s dick is starting to fatten up as he tightens the grip of his leg and pulls Shane in against him. He breaks the kiss again, tipping his head back to pant at the ceiling as Shane begins mouthing the tendons in his neck._ _

__“Are we seriously doing this here?” he asks, closing his eyes when Shane nudges him back a little so he can press his teeth to Ryan’s collarbone. “I really don’t trust this table.”_ _

__Shane bites lightly at his chin before kissing him again, his tongue flicking over the tops of Ryan’s teeth until Ryan touches it with his own._ _

__“I highly doubt we’re the only ones to ever fuck around in this office, before,” Shane says, his lips still touching Ryan’s._ _

__For a moment, Ryan seriously considers it. He and Shane are still figuring things out, what gets each other off, and each little bit puts Ryan more and more at ease with it. But still, getting off at work, in their studio, no less, seems like the edge of his ever-expanding comfort zone._ _

__Ryan kisses Shane again and pulls back. “We should probably save it for, you know, not here.”_ _

__Shane relents without protest, stepping back and allowing Ryan to slide to his feet. His dick is hard enough that it presses noticeably against his zipper, but Shane averts his gaze when Ryan adjusts himself. He clears his throat._ _

__“So, ahh, you want to share a memory with me?” he asks, watching Shane as he moves around the table, glancing over the book titles on the shelves along the back wall._ _

__“If I can.”_ _

__“I’m guessing you mean something other than just telling me whatever it is.”_ _

__Shane nods, turning to face him again. “I think maybe jumping right into sharing my sight was too big a first step. Hopefully this is easier than that.”_ _

__“Hopefully,” Ryan says, rubbing absently at the fresh scar on his wrist. The skin is still pink and shiny, and Shane looks physically pained for a moment when he watches Ryan touch it. He takes a breath and pulls out one of the chairs behind the table, dropping down into it. “Okay, what do we do?” he asks, setting his hands against his thighs and rubbing his palms against the material of his jeans._ _

__Pulling the other chair out, Shane sits down facing him, their knees bumping. “I don’t know if this will work, either. If it starts to hurt, just… stomp on my foot or something.”_ _

__“Oh, I’ll break your foot, you don’t have to worry about that.”_ _

__Shane huffs a laugh, his eyes going squinty in the way that Ryan finds adorable and wouldn’t admit under threat of torture._ _

__“Okay,” he says, scooting closer. His knees bracket one of Ryan’s thighs and Ryan bites the inside of his lip at their positioning._ _

__Shane lifts his hands like he wants to touch Ryan’s face, before he drops them and then holds his hands out, palms up. He clears his throat. “Give me your hands.”_ _

__Ryan holds back any visible sign of hesitation but the pulse of blood behind his ears is hard to ignore. He sets his hands in Shane’s._ _

__“I really am gonna stomp on your toes or something, if you burn me again,” Ryan tells him seriously._ _

__“You better,” Shane says. “Close your eyes.”_ _

__Ryan takes a breath and lets it out slowly as his eyes fall shut. “Now what?”_ _

__“Well, shut up, first off.”_ _

__“Fuck you.”_ _

__“Ryan.”_ _

__“Sorry.”_ _

__Shane’s fingers close around his wrists and Ryan’s palms start to sweat. He tries to ignore it, attempting to clear his mind and not think about anything but whatever it is that Shane wants to show him. He counts his breaths._ _

__“Just—if you feel anything, don’t fight me, okay?” Ryan nods and Shane’s thumbs brush the smooth, new skin on the backs of his wrists._ _

__The two of them are quiet for a long time, to the point where it starts to feel awkward. Ryan doesn’t feel anything going on in his head, doesn’t feel like he has otherworldly vision, or know something that he didn’t know before. He still just feels like the same old Ryan, with the same old memories. At least his skin doesn’t feel like it’s about to burn right off the bone, so he figures that’s a plus. He wants to open his eyes and peek at Shane but he also doesn’t want to mess this up._ _

__Eventually, Shane lets out a quiet sigh. “One of my favorite times inhabiting a body was during the Chicago World’s Fair.” Ryan just barely manages to keep from voicing the question on the tip of his tongue. “It wasn’t as big a draw for me as a war, or anything, but it had its fair share of horror. It even had its own serial killer,” Shane says with a lot more levity than is probably called for._ _

__“H.H. Holmes,” Ryan finds himself saying without thinking about it._ _

__“Yes. You know how they say that some people are born with the devil in them? He really was. Not in the literal sense, but that soul was unsalvageable from the moment it was born.”_ _

__The smell of lake water suddenly fills Ryan’s nose and he sniffs, shaking his head slightly. Shane’s fingers rub back and forth against his skin, soothing, almost hypnotic._ _

__“I watched that one for a good while.”_ _

__“That’s fucked up.”_ _

__“Obviously.”_ _

__Ryan’s face starts to feel warm, and for a moment he thinks that whatever happened at the hospital, that burned him, is starting to happen again. But it never gets uncomfortable, just steady heat against his skin that makes him feel like he needs to squint his eyes. Like too bright sunlight._ _

__“My favorite part, though, was the beach. They had ships on the lake and fireworks at night. I’d never seen anything like it.”_ _

__Ryan swears a breeze rustles his hair and he feels suddenly like his feet are sinking into cool, wet sand._ _

__“Holy shit,” he whispers and Shane shushes him quietly, gripping his wrists again before letting go of one and touching his fingertips to Ryan’s temple, placing his thumb over his eye._ _

__There’s an uncomfortable pushing sensation, and a too-hard pressure in his head that makes his eyes hurt. And just as suddenly as it comes on, it eases, and Ryan opens his eyes to a hazy vision, a flash of a deep blue body of water from high up. A Ferris Wheel, he thinks, the car rocking a bit, and people all around him talking. He can’t hear a word of it, and his vision is cloudy, like when he isn’t wearing his glasses when he needs to be. He blinks, trying to clear it._ _

__There’s a man beside him, shorter than him, with curly brown hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. The pressure in his head picks up again as he watches the stranger beside him, who smiles slowly but doesn’t turn to look at him._ _

__The man tips his head toward Ryan and says something without taking his eyes off of the lake stretched out before them. Ryan can’t hear him. He can’t hear anything. His head feels like it’s going to explode into a million tiny pieces._ _

__“Ryan,” Shane says, jolting him back to reality._ _

__He takes a gasping breath, like a drowning man, loud and shaky. Shane’s hand is still holding his, and the other takes hold of his chin._ _

__“Shit. Here,” Shane says, bringing Ryan’s hand up to pinch his own nose shut, “nosebleed. Hold on.”_ _

__Ryan feels lightheaded, like he’d held his breath for too long or something. He braces himself on the table while he holds his nose and takes long, slow inhales through his mouth._ _

__“Here,” Shane says quietly, tossing a box of tissue onto the table and holding up a small wad of them to Ryan’s nose._ _

__Ryan takes it from him with a mumbled _thanks_._ _

__Shane sits down in the chair opposite him, again, their knees bumping. “I’m sorry,” Shane tells him._ _

__“It’s fine.” Ryan shrugs. “I actually saw what you wanted me to see, this time. And no burns, either.”_ _

__“Just a gushing fountain of nose blood.”_ _

__“Nothing says sneaking away in the middle of the work day, with your significant other, like a memory from the 1890s, and nosebleed.”_ _

__Shane hands him another tissue when the blood starts to seep through the others._ _

__“I’m significant, am I?” Shane asks, a teasing lift to his voice._ _

__“You’re definitely an _other_. I don’t know about the _significant_ part.”_ _

__Shane pouts his bottom lip and Ryan rolls his eyes. He tips his head forward and barely pulls the bloody tissue away from his nose before he’s kissing Shane. Objectively, it’s disgusting, but it’s also equal parts hilarious to listen to the range of sounds that Shane makes before he gives in and kisses Ryan back._ _

__Ryan laughs against his mouth and when Shane pulls back, there’s a smear of Ryan’s blood to the right of his nose._ _

__“You are truly something else,” Shane tells him._ _

__Ryan wipes at the blood with his thumb and Shane takes hold of his wrist and sucks Ryan’s thumb into his mouth._ _

__Then Shane is laughing at the sound that Ryan makes, holding his thumb between his teeth._ _

__“You’re disgusting.”_ _

__“And you are delicious,” Shane says, leaning up out of his seat and sticking his tongue out, like he’s trying to lick Ryan’s face._ _

__“No, no, no!” Ryan half-shouts, laughing, holding up both of his arms as Shane leans in closer. He holds the chair in place with his hands on the armrests, and Ryan can’t even push away from him. Ryan is gearing up for a rather unmanly sounding shriek when there’s suddenly a knock on the door._ _

__Ryan is almost distracted enough to let Shane get in close enough to lick him, but he wedges the side of his hand into Shane’s mouth before he can._ _

__“Yeah?” Ryan yells. The door handle jiggles._ _

__“Yo, are you two naked in there?” Steven’s voice asks, muffled._ _

__Shane almost bites him when he laughs, pulling back and standing upright, freeing Ryan to get up as well. He snatches his hat off the floor and hastily finger-combs his hair back before tugging it on again._ _

__“No, we’re not—“_ _

__“Yes!” Shane calls over him. “We’re trying to have a private, romantic romp in here—“_ _

__“Shut up, Shane!”_ _

__“Amongst our many books—“_ _

__“Jesus christ,” Ryan mutters, coming around the table to go unlock the door. He wipes at his nose, hoping it’s stopped bleeding, before he throws the door open._ _

__Steven stands on the other side, eyes narrowed, gaze flicking back and forth between them. Ryan doesn’t think he’s ever felt less casual in his life; he suddenly has no idea what to do with his arms._ _

__“Right,” Steven finally says. “You got beard burn.” Ryan touches his mouth with both hands, eyes going wide. “Anyway, put your pants back on; we drew straws and you two are doing the Chipotle run.”_ _

__“How is that fair, we weren’t even there,” Ryan asks._ _

__“Maybe you’ll think about that next time you run off to screw around in the middle of the day.” Steven smiles at him and pats his cheek. Ryan swats at his hand and does a double take as Shane steps up beside him, acting like he’s doing up the buckle on his belt._ _

__Steven laughs and Ryan rubs at his face with a muttered, “Oh my god.”_ _

__“Come on, Ry. Burritos await,” Shane says, nudging him forward with a hand on his back. “The lunch of champions.”_ _

__“I guess.”_ _

__“The perfect post-coital snack.”_ _

__“Oh my _god_.” Steven’s grin is absolutely gleeful. “Don’t worry, Steven, some day maybe you can have your very first post-sex meal.”_ _

__Shane’s laugh echoes throughout the studio and Steven scoffs at them. “At least I won’t be feeding my s.o. a nine-dollar burrito after we bump uglies at work.”_ _

__“Keep your standards high,” Shane says sagely._ _

__Ryan elbows Shane and gets his hat pushed down over his eyes for his trouble._ _


	2. Chapter 2

Ryan is forever baffled by everything that Shane chooses to be. He’s hilarious and kind, open with his affections, he’s infinitely old and should be world-weary to a degree that Ryan can’t even understand. And yet he seems to enjoy pretty much every aspect of his life. Simple things, like holding hands, and touching Ryan’s neck, combing his fingers through Ryan’s hair while they binge Netflix shows on the weekends, they are all effortlessly appreciated and freely given.

Ryan has always been a tactile person. He likes to cuddle, he likes to hug, and kiss, and hold Shane’s big, dumb hands in his own. He likes it and he’s always surprised that Shane initiates so much of their intimacy. He allows Ryan to lead the way with whatever he’s comfortable showing in public, and never pushes for much when they’re alone.

He supposes he would also be comfortable waiting long periods of time if he were immortal. Shane is content to follow Ryan’s lead. 

And Ryan wants to go out. On a date.

So, Friday night, after work, Ryan goes home and showers, puts his contacts in, styles his hair, pulls on his nicest pair of dark-wash jeans (the pair with no holes at the knees), and a button-down shirt. He hesitates in front of the mirror, for entirely too long, tucking and untucking his shirt. He even tries a partial tuck before pulling it back out and smoothing the hem down.

“Look like a fucking douchebag,” he mutters, flicking off the light. 

It’s just cool enough outside for him to grab a soft, gray cardigan to wear over it all. He resists the urge to check himself over again because his hair can probably only take so much artful ruffling before it gets up off of his head and abandons him. 

Regardless, he’s late picking up Shane, who sits on the front stoop of his building, with his glasses on, looking at his phone. His legs are so long, awkwardly bent up, that he looks a little bit like a scarecrow come to life when he stands. 

“And that is just what you’re into, Bergara,” he mutters to himself as Shane approaches the passenger side door. He gets in one final finger-comb of his hair before Shane taps on the window.

Ryan rolls it down. “It’s unlocked.”

Shane leans on the doorframe, arching an eyebrow at him. “Whatcha lookin’ for tonight?” he asks, his voice pitched low and sultry.

Ryan stares at him for a moment, his brain reeling to catch up. Then he laughs. “Someone with legs up to here,” he says, holding his hand to his chin. “And a relatively flat ass.”

Shane sputters and laughs in the way that makes his eyes squint as he pulls open the car door and climbs in. He leans across the console and kisses Ryan.

“My ass is divine,” Shane tells him when he sits back.

“Probably not quite the word for it.”

“Hey, if you believe some doctrine, it was, technically, once a divine ass.”

“I don’t think the dogma of any religion refers to your flat ass.”

Shane waves a dismissive hand at him as Ryan merges back into traffic. “You love my ass.”

“I… yeah, kind of.”

The pat on his thigh is either sympathetic or placating and Ryan doesn’t know which. He just likes that Shane leaves it there while he drives. 

 

\--

 

Shane looks pretty damn good, in his tight maroon jeans and black button-down. His hair is a little wild and his beard is really starting to fill out on his cheeks. The skin of his fingers is warm and a little rough as he touches the new scar Ryan’s wrist throughout dinner, his fingers repeatedly passing over the raised patch of skin that he’d left behind. There’s something reverent about the gesture that Ryan doesn’t really have the mental faculties to parse when he’s two glasses of wine deep, but he files it away to mull over later.

Alcohol doesn’t appear to affect Shane the way it does Ryan, but he does seem to relax even more, holding Ryan’s fingers between his own on the tabletop, and smiling a little lopsidedly in the low light of the room. Ryan’s face feels warm and he worries for a moment that his cheeks might be getting red from the wine, but Shane doesn’t acknowledge it.

It’s been a long time since Ryan was on a date this nice. Or any date. He feels warm and comfortable with one of Shane’s feet trapped beneath his own, and the heat of him so close. The longer they sit here, the more that Ryan just wants to cut to the end of the night so that they can be at home. Alone.

Shane drives Ryan’s car back to Shane’s place and ushers him inside. He mostly just wants to get to the part where they’re making out, already, but Shane gives him a bottle of water to drink first, avoiding Ryan’s grabbing hands. 

“Can’t have you getting dehydrated on me,” Shane tells him. Ryan downs half the bottle in one go and Shane’s face makes an expression that is half amused and half impressed. 

“I had three glasses of wine.”

“That’s a lot of wine for someone so tiny.”

“Fuck you,” Ryan laughs, tossing his cardigan over the arm of the couch. “Come over here and kiss me.”

Shane steps closer, enough that Ryan can feel the heat of him by proximity, and Ryan shivers, his temples starting to pound a little. “Drink your water, like a good boy.”

Ryan almost chokes on the drink he’s taking; he definitely gets water running down his chin and on his shirt. “Don’t—“ he laughs, “don’t fucking say shit like that.”

Shane sets both hands against his hips and steps minutely closer. Their height difference is never so obvious as it is when they’re like this. Ryan hates it a little but he loves it a whole lot more than that. A hand runs down his back and squeezes his ass. Ryan muffles his groan against Shane’s collarbone.

“I can’t tell you what a good boy you are?”

“No. Absolutely not. None of that. No ‘daddy’ shit. Just—I’m still getting used to you having a dick.”

“I’ve had the same dick ever since you met me.”

“Yeah, but I’ve only recently started touching it. It’s a change. Gotta ease into it.”

The hand on his ass squeezes again and Ryan presses his face to Shane’s shoulder, dropping the mostly-empty water bottle to the floor so he can grip Shane’s biceps with both hands.

“Yeah?” Shane asks, his voice low and heated. “I’ll _ease into it_.”

Ryan laughs again. “Fucking—just don’t talk.”

Shane is still smiling when he leans in to kiss Ryan. It should be weird, kissing his best friend, touching him, wanting him. It should be, but it’s not. Ryan loves it. He loves everything about the way Shane’s facial hair scratches the skin around his mouth, he loves the faint smell of his cologne, the shape of him under his hands. He loves that he _knows_ Shane.

He runs his hand up Shane’s neck and into his hair, tightening his fingers as the kiss intensifies. Ryan’s been a little hard since Shane started stroking his wrist back at dinner. And maybe that’s a stupid thing to get worked up over, but there is heat pooling in his groin, and pressing himself against Shane feels so goddamn good.

Giving one final suck to Shane’s tongue, he eases back, lifting his brows in question. Shane holds his hand out, gesturing toward the hallway, and Ryan moves, tripping over his own feet and letting out a surprised giggle. He can feel Shane right behind him and it makes him move faster, laughing as he stumbles into the bedroom. Shane grabs the back of his head and presses a kiss against his mouth while Ryan starts in on the buttons of his own shirt.

“Button-downs are the worst invention in the history of mankind,” Ryan huffs, laughing still, watching Shane get his own shirt halfway unbuttoned and tugging it up over his head. His glasses come off in the flurry of movement and Ryan reaches out in a halfhearted attempt at catching the fabric. Then Shane ducks down to grab his knees and hefts him up off of the floor.

“Oh shit!” Ryan shouts, half-laughing, sounding breathless to his own ears, grabbing onto Shane’s shoulders. He doesn’t have time to think about anything before he’s tossed down onto his back on the bed.

He feels like he’s laughing entirely too much, up until the point where Shane fits his knee under Ryan’s thigh and climbs up between his legs. Ryan reaches out and grabs his neck as Shane leans down to kiss him. Hands work at his shirt, still buttoned, pushing it up to expose Ryan’s stomach, and then Shane is leaning his weight against him and _grinding_ down.

“Oh, fuck,” Ryan whispers, arching into it. Shane does it again and again, rolling their hips together, until Ryan is so hard, so fast, that it actually hurts a little. “Oh, jesus christ, Shane, fucking touch me, already.”

Shane kneels up over him and reaches between them to tug Ryan’s jeans open. Ryan levers himself up onto his elbows and Shane kisses him again, hunched over, hand inside his underwear, stroking his cock. His head tips back and he just tries to breathe. It feels so goddamn good. The air between them is heavy and warm, Ryan starting to sweat, still mostly clothed. He wants to get naked, he wants to feel Shane’s skin against his own. He wants so many things and he doesn’t know how to ask for them.

Biting his lip, he reaches down and grabs Shane’s wrist. “Wait, wait, hold on,” he pants.

Shane pauses, hand still tight around him, slick and sticky under his thumb, pressed up against the head. “Yeah?” he asks.

He swallows to wet his throat. “Can we try something?” 

Shane nods. “What do you want?”

“Anything. Well—no, like,” his heart starts to beat harder, “you know what I mean. Just—can we… kick it up a notch?”

Shane arches an eyebrow at him, lips parting a little as he grins. “Kick it up a notch,” he repeats.

“You know what I mean,” Ryan mutters, pinching his eyes shut and sucking in a breath that dries out his throat when Shane strokes him hard and tight. “Fuck, that’s good.”

Shane kisses him. “Lie back.”

Ryan collapses against his blankets without an ounce of grace. He keeps his head lifted, watching Shane’s every move. Anticipation makes his legs shake when he lifts his hips to let Shane pulls his jeans and boxer-briefs down. Long, warm fingers brush up his calves, pulling at the hair there, sending pinpricks of sensation shooting to his groin. Ryan’s fists clench in the bunched up comforter under his back as Shane leans over him again to mouth hotly at the crease of his thigh.

“Shane,” he rasps, lifting his head again, unsure of when he set it back and closed his eyes. “Please, seriously—“

A hand lifts his dick from his belly and then Shane’s tongue is dragging over the head. Ryan’s back arches as he presses his head against the bed, again. His hands fly to Shane’s head, fisting both hands in his hair, just holding on as Shane mouths at him. He’s going to die, right here, just like this, lying on his bed wearing a half-buttoned shirt, with Shane kneeling between his legs.

Ryan’s chest heaves when Shane takes him in his mouth. He grips Shane’s shoulder with one hand and keeps the other fisted in his hair. He brings his knees up, planting his feet on the bed, feeling the muscles twitch and tighten as Shane’s head bobs between his thighs.

He can barely focus, can hardly lift his head for more than a few seconds at a time to watch. The sight of his cock sliding in and out of Shane’s mouth, slick and wet, is too much for him. Shane takes him deep and hums around him, swallowing and using his hand on what he can’t reach. Ryan has had his dick sucked before, but never like this; it’s never been this good, and he knows it’s because Shane is the one doing it.

Ryan’s entire body feels like it’s on fire. He feels sweaty and hot and tense enough that he thinks he’s either going to come or the muscles in his thighs are going to snap. He reaches for the hem of his shirt and tries to tug it up, but he can’t get it. The cuffs are buttoned and so are half the buttons down the front. Ryan refuses to whine, but a strained breath makes its way out of his throat. 

Shane’s hand skates up his stomach and pushes at his shirt, getting it bunched up under Ryan’s shoulders. The pinch at his nipple is unexpected but it makes him arch, and Shane chokes a little.

“Sorry!” he gasps, lifting his head again. “I’m sorry.” Ryan strokes his cheek, carding Shane’s sweat-damp hair back with his fingers. 

Shane pulls off of him with an obscene popping sound that makes Ryan’s stomach swoop. 

“Give me your hand,” he says, his voice low and raspy like Ryan has never heard before. Another shudder works its way down his spine as he lifts his shaky hand; Shane takes hold of it and sets it on Ryan’s chest. Shane’s fingers move his until he’s got his own nipple pinched between his thumb and forefinger. Ryan moans again, following the wordless instruction and bringing his free hand up to pinch his other nipple.

“Jesus,” Ryan groans, turning his head and rubbing his sweaty temple against the comforter. Every touch is like a livewire straight to his cock. He’s so hard, leaking in steady pulses, and Shane’s mouth is so _good_. He wants to come so bad.

“Shane,” he breathes as his thighs twitch and his hips jerk upward to the steady suction. “Oh, fuck, Shane, I’m gonna come.” Shane slows the movement of his head, gripping Ryan’s cock in a steady hand as he pulls off. Ryan lifts one hand from his chest to wipe at the sweat beading on his forehead.

“You can come,” Shane tells him. 

“Like any second now,” Ryan warns. “In or around your mouth.” Shane licks the head of his dick and Ryan lets out a whiny huff of air. “Fuck, _Shane_.”

Shane’s hand starts jerking him off, hard and tight, fist twisting just right on the down stroke. He fits the head of Ryan’s cock between his lips and pushes his tongue against Ryan’s slit. And Ryan arches his back and comes immediately, nails digging into Shane’s shoulder and his own chest, then the comforter. He comes so hard and so long that his thighs are still shaking, the muscles in his stomach still jumping, when he opens his eyes again.

“Oh my god,” he rasps, letting his legs flop open uselessly, the muscles taxed. Shane stands beside the bed and shoves his jeans and boxers down before he climbs up to lie beside him.

Ryan lets himself be gathered up, pushing his thigh between Shane’s and kissing him, ignoring the taste of his own come in Shane’s mouth. He pulls at Shane’s hair, tugging his head to the side to deepen the kiss, even though he’s still panting and short of breath. 

“Fuck, Ryan,” Shane groans, rocking against the thigh Ryan has pressed up under his cock. His arms tighten and Ryan can feel the hot, wet pulses of come against his hip as Shane comes without a hand on him.

When Shane’s hips finally still, Ryan slumps, pushing at his chest until he rolls onto his back and Ryan can lay himself out on the sheets beside him. He’s too hot to cuddle, and his entire body feels sticky and wet, but it’s good. It’s all so good. 

Ryan turns his head to look at Shane and jolts a little when he finds pitch black eyes looking back at him. His heart leaps into his throat before he can tell himself that it’s all right, that it’s just Shane. He huffs a laugh that sounds about as self-deprecating as it feels, rubbing at his face with his shaky hand, as Shane blinks his eyes back to their normal brown.

A hand lands on his belly, fingers scratching through the trail of hair below his navel. 

“Sorry,” Shane says. “I didn’t realize—“

“It’s fine. I just wasn’t expecting it.”

“ _It_ being my face.”

Ryan flicks his fingers between his eyes and Shane jerks back, laughing. “Your giant, beady, little eyes.”

“How can they be both giant and little?”

“Fuck you, that’s how.”

Shane pushes himself up onto his elbow and leans over Ryan, brushing his hair off of his forehead and just looking at him for a moment. Ryan feels almost awkward, on display in a way that he isn’t used to; like he’s a piece in a museum. Shane kisses him lightly.

“That was a pretty good date.”

Ryan grins. “Yeah, not bad.”

“We’ll get better at it. Practice makes perfect and so on.”

“You just wanna get laid again.”

“As soon as possible, yes,” Shane says with sincerity.

Ryan pushes at his face until he flops back to the bed, laughing quietly. “I’m gonna shower.”

“You’re gonna stay, right?” Shane asks. Ryan nods and Shane quirks a smile at him. “I’ll get you something to wear.”

“Cool,” Ryan says, pushing himself up and off the bed, padding out to the bathroom.

“You know,” Shane’s voice stops him at the doorway, “you should bring some stuff over. For when you stay the night.”

Ryan has to bite the inside of his lip to keep from grinning like an idiot. “Cool,” he says again, before making his escape to the bathroom. 

The silence of the bathroom and the frigid feel of the tile beneath his feet is a welcome relief. Ryan leans against the door and takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. He’s not sure where his mind is going to land, so he doesn’t give his brain long enough to filter through his thoughts. He’s happy and that’s what he wants to focus on. 

Ryan leaves the bathroom door unlocked, just in case, and leans in to start the shower. He’s bent over, waiting for the water to warm before he pulls the stopper on the faucet, when a drop of blood lands in the tub. For a moment, Ryan just stares at it. Then another drop lands, and another. He yanks the stopper and cups his other hand under his nose, stepping over to the mirror. Pain lances through his temple, sharp and sudden, and gone just as fast. It leaves him bracing himself against the edge of the counter and gasping for breath.

“What the fuck?” he whispers, lifting his head to squint at his reflection in the mirror; blood runs from both nostrils, over his lips and down to bead at his chin. He turns away from his reflection and sticks his bloody hand into the shower water. It’s only lukewarm when he steps in, but he doesn’t care. He turns his face into the spray and wipes at his nose, light pink water running over his hands. It’s probably nothing.

 

\--

 

Monday morning is terrible. It straight up sucks shit. 

Ryan oversleeps his first alarm, then panics when he hears the blaring horn of his backup alarm, literally almost falling out of bed in his half-frenzied state. He doesn’t have time to shower, doesn’t have time to make himself a cup of coffee, can’t find matching socks, and spends seven goddamn minutes searching for his car keys. 

His luck does not change, once he gets behind the wheel. He gets stuck in traffic, hits every single red light, and almost rear-ends someone who brakes in the middle of the road for no fucking reason, _twice_. Ryan’s body composition is roughly forty percent pure, blinding rage by the time he pulls into the staff parking lot.

The very moment he steps out of his car, he feels the telltale wetness of blood in his right nostril. 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he asks, wiping at the skin above his lip, his fingertips coming away bloody. Ryan is just about over these fucking nosebleeds. When he leans into the car to grab a napkin, blood drips onto the light gray fabric of his shirt; it might as well be neon orange for how it sticks out.

“Great. Just fucking amazing.” He slams his car door as hard as he can but it isn’t even remotely satisfying. A sudden, throbbing pain creeps up into his temples and across his forehead, making him stumble over his own feet, practically doubling over in the middle of the parking lot. It takes his breath away, but it only lasts a moment, even if it leaves his limbs feeling shaky when he starts moving again. He trudges his way into the building, with his laptop case clutched in one hand and a crumpled, bloody napkin stuffed up under his nose with the other.

By the time he makes it to his desk, Ryan is a little, black storm cloud, tossing his laptop down a touch too carelessly. Shane is already sitting at his computer, watching him, with his headphones off of the ear closest to Ryan. He stays silent as Ryan pulls out his phone and turns on the forward-facing camera, dropping down into his chair, trying to wipe the dried blood off his face.

“Do you wanna fuckin’ help, or something?” Ryan snaps, turning to look at him after a few, awkward, silent moments.

Shane’s eyebrows lift a bit. “Only if I can lick it off.”

Ryan hates that that makes him laugh, because he really wants to be pissed off right now. “Fuck you, Shane,” he grumbles, fighting his smile down, turning back to his camera.

“Maybe later. But with less blood involved.” Ryan waits. “Or more. Don’t really know what you’re into, yet.”

“I knew you were a fuckin’ vampire.”

Shane leans against his armrest, close enough to Ryan’s ear to make his shoulder hunch when he puts on a Transylvanian accent and says, “Let me drink your nose blood, Ryan.”

Ryan lowers his phone and turns to look at Shane, who is still close enough to make his eyes want to cross, and just stares until Shane smiles at him, showing off his crooked teeth. It’s unfair, really, that Shane can pull him out of a bad mood so quickly. With his soft, dark eyes and his stupid beard. 

Ryan sighs. “I hate you.”

“I know,” Shane says with a grin. He closes the distance and kisses Ryan quick and chaste, right on the mouth.

“Oh,” Ryan says, blinking at him. He can see one of the girls diagonal to him smiling to herself, pretending not to be watching them. “I didn’t know we were doing at-work PDA.”

“Should I not have done that?”

“No, it’s—it’s cool. It’s good.” Ryan nods. “It’s good.”

“Good,” Shane echoes, still smiling. “You wrote me such beautiful poetry after I kissed you the first time, too.”

“Just call me Shakespeare.” Ryan takes one last look at himself on his phone screen then sets it aside, unzipping his laptop case. 

“D’you have a lot of nosebleeds?” Shane asks, rolling his chair back into place in front of his own computer screens. 

For some reason, the question makes Ryan’s heart beat faster, makes him feel a little icy with panic, and he doesn’t know why. He quickly tallies the amount of nosebleeds that he’s had lately, and this is only the second one that Shane has seen.

“Uhh, not really,” he says, sniffing involuntarily. “It’s probably just be the air; it’s still super dry.”

“You have a humidifier?” 

Ryan glances at him. Shane’s sitting there, in his flannel shirt and hoodie, his hair is an artfully crafted mess, glasses perched on his nose, and he’s asking Ryan about humidifiers. Silently he wonders when Shane’s demonic nature cooled to this comparatively docile, domestic, mother hen version. If he had to guess, he would assume that demons as old as Shane would probably be terrifyingly powerful and twice as hateful.

But Shane is… just not.

Ryan blows out a quiet breath, rubbing his fingers gingerly over his nostrils. “I’ve never really needed one before.”

“We’ll get you one,” Shane says, not turning away from his computer.

There isn’t much to say in response to that, so Ryan just nods, and boots up his laptop.

 

\--

 

That afternoon, Shane convinces Ryan to head out to get lunch with him. Ryan wants to just order delivery or resort to begging someone else to do a food run. He’s a little grumpy, a lot hungry, and he still has blood on his shirt.

When Ryan points this out to him, Shane unzips his hoodie and tosses it to Ryan, in a warm, wadded up bundle, inside-out sleeves and all. He almost protests but his stomach chooses that moment to growl loudly and Shane’s eyebrows almost disappear into his hairline.

“The tummy demon has spoken.”

Ryan sighs and stands up, tugging Shane’s hoodie on; it smells good—like Shane—and the fabric is uncomfortably warm. He does another take at Shane, who is still wearing at least two shirts.

“How many layers are you wearing?”

Shane shrugs, his hands in his pockets. “I get cold.”

They start walking, their arms brushing as they head for the stairs. Ryan keeps his voice quiet when he speaks. “That hellfire core isn’t keeping you warm?”

“Always,” Shane says, patting his own chest, lifting his head, a little, in pride. “I’ll run hotter in the summer, though. And be about a hundred times more comfortable.”

“And you somehow managed growing up in the Midwest.”

“I moved to southern California for a reason.”

Once they hit the sidewalk, Shane sets his hand on Ryan’s low back, like he’s guiding him through the moderate foot traffic. There aren’t nearly enough people that they couldn’t walk beside one another, if they wanted, but Shane stays half a step behind him and maintains the touch. They only make it another block before Ryan reaches back and takes hold of his arm, pulling at it until he can slide his fingers between Shane’s.

“Well, if you wanted to hold my hand that bad, Ryan…” Shane says, tightening his grip and swinging their hands between them, obnoxiously.

Ryan rolls his eyes but he’s smiling. It’s good. The sun is shining, even though the breeze is still a little brisk for his liking, and he’s about five blocks away from the burrito bowl of his dreams.

Up ahead, the sound of nearby sirens gets progressively louder. An ambulance, with its flashing lights on, comes weaving in and out of traffic, behind them, and turns at the traffic signal on the next cross street. There’s a low murmur among the people they pass as they go, and Ryan feels that morbid sense of wanting to look, of being unable to look away from a total train wreck in progress.

Ryan glances over at Shane to see him already looking in that direction. His eyes flicker black, so quickly that Ryan almost thinks he imagined it, except for how Shane immediately drops his head, to cover the slip, rubbing at his brow.

Ryan tugs Shane’s hand. “The fuck was that?” he whispers.

“Nothing,” Shane says, looking over at him. 

“I thought you said you never lie to me.”

“Nothing I can say while standing in the middle of the sidewalk,” Shane says, dryly. 

Ryan hadn’t realized that they’d stopped moving. He steps closer to the curb, pulling Shane along with him, keeping them out of the way of other pedestrians. 

“Did someone just die, over there?” Ryan asks, quietly, his eyes scanning Shane’s face for any hint of deception; there’s a sour feeling in the pit of his stomach at the idea.

Shane gives a cursory glance around before he nods. “Yes. And that doesn’t count as a lie. I was going to tell you, when we were in a more private setting than on a sidewalk full of people in the middle of Los Angeles.” 

Ryan holds his gaze for a moment before he concedes. “Fair enough.” He looks toward the cross street again, where the traffic is beginning to backup. Biting his lip for a moment, he looks back at Shane. “Who died?”

Shane looks away for a moment and then starts walking again, pulling Ryan along with a tug at his hand. “Come on.”

“Whoa, wait a second—“

“I think I can show you this one.”

Ryan pulls back on Shane’s arm, right as they reach the street corner. “I don’t want to see a freshly-dead person,” he whispers, a little loud and a little hysterical.

Shane pulls him closer with the collar of his hoodie and then touches his neck. “I think this is the best shot I have at showing you a new spirit.” He tips his head to the side, looking down the next street. 

Ryan has his back to it, his shoulders hunching up. “I don’t—what does it… look like?”

“A little bloody, but not bad.”

“Jesus christ,” Ryan mutters, rubbing at his eyes with his free hand. “I don’t like blood and guts and shit, Shane.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“It’s not that bad by _your_ definition or by _my_ definition?”

Shane seems to think about that one for a minute. “Can you just trust me, here?”

Ryan sighs. “Why’d you have to put it like that?”

“Is that an ‘okay’?”

“What if you burn me again?” It’s a legitimate fear of his; the first attempt made him puke.

“We practiced. We got it the last time.”

“ _Once_ and that was us like… mind-melding and sharing your weird serial killer memories.”

Shane blows out a breath, looking toward the accident scene again. “We’re wasting time. We don’t have to do it, if you really don’t want to, but the window’s about to close.”

Traffic has come to a standstill around them and Ryan can see flashing lights in his peripheral vision. His heart is starting to pound and his palms are getting sweaty; he feels a little sick at the thought of going to the scene of an accident specifically to see a newly dead person. Or their ghost. Whatever. 

“Okay.”

Shane leads him around the corner and through the throng of people gathering on the sidewalk to rubberneck. He grips Shane’s hand and lets himself be lead, keeping his head low and his eyes on his feet. 

Ryan’s internal monologue is just an alternating line of _what the fuck am I doing_ and _I’m going to see a ghost_.

It feels weird and probably disrespectful to be doing this. No sooner does he finish that thought than Shane comes to an abrupt stop and Ryan runs headlong into his shoulder, bumping his nose hard enough to make him reel back.

“Ow, fuck!” He checks for blood—because god knows he’s prone to it, lately—but his fingers come back dry, for once.

Shane takes hold of his arm and manhandles him into an awkward position between himself and the man in front of him. He’s still reeling a little when Shane grips his biceps and digs his fingers in. His skin feels immediately hot and Ryan sucks in a breath to tell Shane to stop, the fear at the remembered sensation of pain creeping through his arms.

Then Shane leans in, lips just barely brushing his ear, and says, “Look.”

“What am I looking at?” Ryan’s view is mostly the back of someone else’s head. He cranes his neck, trying to see around them, where the actual accident is.

“No,” Shane tells him.

Heat spreads through Ryan’s chest and gripping at his spine, filling his chest, making him sweat; feeling Shane’s pull inside of him. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, but there’s a distinct feeling of not being quite alone in his body anymore that borders on terrifying. 

Shane’s bearded cheek presses against his temple, shushing him quietly from within his own head. It’s weird. It’s so fucking weird and Ryan could freak the fuck out right now, if he thought about it hard enough. The warm sensation in his chest—the _bond_ between them—pulses behind his sternum. Ryan swallows to wet his dry throat feeling a pull to the left, suddenly just _knowing_ what Shane wants him to do, where he wants Ryan to look.

At first glance, all Ryan sees is people gawking. And then it’s like his vision darkens and sharpens at the same time, like everything is suddenly in super high definition. He’s never, ever seen things this clearly before. It reminds him of when he got his first pair of glasses and he realized just how blurry the world used to be. Everything is pulsing heat and dark, gaping cold. He wonders if this is how Shane sees everything, all the time. It’s as incredible as it is foreign. And it makes his eyes hurt, almost immediately. The pressure in his head increases, making him squint against it, like he has to fight to keep his eyes open under the strain. His body isn’t equipped to handle this supernatural force for long, if at all.

He blinks hard, feeling that nudge again, like Shane wants him to look to the left. Ryan feels like he’s having an out-of-body experience, or something. It doesn’t feel like anyone is forcing him to do anything, but he feels like he’s watching himself, right now. Like he’s not the one experiencing any of this. 

There’s also the completely solid reality that, if he looks where Shane is telling him to, that he will see a ghost.

Not just a ghost, but a really, _really_ recently deceased person. A spirit that probably doesn’t even realize that it’s dead. And something about that just feels wrong to him. 

Yes, he wants to experience Shane’s sight and see what he sees with this vision that feels like a superpower in his brain. But he doesn’t think he wants it to happen like this. It feels weird, making something like guilt twist his insides up. It feels almost disrespectful, somehow. It probably is.

The thing in his chest that ties him to Shane pulses hotly again and Ryan winces. The pressure in his head is enough to make him pinch his eyes shut and drop his head. 

_Enough,_ he thinks, _please_.

Something warm trickles out of his nose and over his lips, and then Shane is gone. Ryan gasps like he’s just come up for air, and immediately the too-much, too-full sensation inside of him lifts. People around them are turning to give him strange looks but Ryan barely notices. He cups his hand around his nose and lets Shane pull him back toward the corner again.

“Here,” Shane says, nudging Ryan’s hand away and pressing his finger to the side of Ryan’s nose. There’s an intense rush of warmth in his face that makes Ryan sneeze.

He rights himself, head still swimming, and glances back at the gathered crowd. Rubbing at his nose with the back of his hand, wiping blood on the cuff of his borrowed hoodie, he looks back at Shane. 

Ryan doesn’t know what the fuck he’s feeling right now. His chest feels hollow, like someone tried on his body for size and it was too small and now he’s all stretched out. He feels achy and a little bit nauseous, and the relief that Shane’s palm against his neck provides is instant and wonderful. Ryan sinks into it, closing his eyes. 

“Fuck,” he mutters, feeling absolutely exhausted. 

Shane’s other hand cups his neck and tips his head up. “You all right?”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t look.”

“No.”

Ryan bites his own lips, catching and holding Shane’s eyes. He feels weird. Practically half of his life has been devoted to the hunt for ghosts, trying to prove to himself that he saw what he saw on the Queen Mary, that he isn’t crazy, that sometimes life continues after death. He’s been trying to capture evidence of spirits for himself and for the rest of the world, but he’s never thought about what he would feel like to actually see one.

Scared, probably. Excited. Maybe even exhilarated. But now, he just kind of feels… sad.

He spits onto the sidewalk, the blood that Shane hadn’t managed to clear away, and wipes his mouth again. There’s an older man standing across the street, staring at him, and Ryan’s face heats.

“You still want to get food?” Shane asks, sounding almost awkward, his thumbs stroking slow circles around the pulse in Ryan’s throat.

The fact that he knows well enough to leave it be, to not push him, loosens the tight clench in his stomach. Ryan reaches out, fisting his hand in Shane’s shirt, and pulls him close, until their chests bump. 

“Just… give me a second,” he says, voice muffled where he presses his face to the curve of Shane’s neck.

Shane’s warm hand comes up to hold the back of his head and Ryan closes his eyes. He counts his breaths and brings his hand up to press against Shane’s chest, over his heart. He knows that the beat there isn’t natural, or even necessarily real, but it’s calming. Ryan isn’t afraid and he isn’t anxious. He doesn’t know what exactly he is, right now. So he just lets himself stand there, with his eyes closed and his nose pressed against Shane’s skin. He just breathes.

 

\--

 

Ryan feels weird for the rest of the day. 

Shane does what he usually does when Ryan gets caught up in his own head and gives him space. He kisses Ryan on the forehead before he leaves for the day and doesn’t say anything about getting dinner after work or, texting him, or calling him. He just squeezes Ryan’s bicep and says, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” before he checks out forty minutes before the end of the work day.

Ryan loves Shane; he really does. And sometimes he can pass for human, with totally normal human emotions and reactions to situations. But other times he does the exact opposite of whatever a normal person would do; he has no idea how he didn’t grow suspicious of Shane sooner than he did. Ryan doesn’t want to be alone, right now. Not when he’s fresh off an experience that really lit their bond up for the first time, let Ryan feel Shane’s presence within him, and let him use Shane’s true sight. And Ryan could have seen a recently deceased person, if he’d allowed himself to look.

Normally Ryan values his time alone, as much as any other normal person does. He needs personal space to recharge, he needs time to do things on his own, and _be_ alone. But he feels ten kinds of fucked up right now and being alone is the last thing that he wants.

Before he leaves the office, he considers asking someone else to hang out or get something to eat; but the thoughts crawling around in his brain right now aren’t something anyone else can help him with. He can’t talk about this with anyone and a small part of him is irrationally mad at Shane for that, even though Ryan agreed to everything that happened and Shane stopped when Ryan told him to.

He’s only got himself to blame for whatever the fuck it is he’s feeling, right now.

He goes home alone, stomach growling but feeling too sore to eat. His entire body feels weird, still, stretched out and achy. Ryan changes into sweatpants and sits down on the couch with a beer. They never did end up getting lunch; Ryan has barely had more than coffee today, and adding alcohol to the mix is undoubtedly a bad idea.

He twists the cap off his beer and tosses it onto the coffee table, downing half of it in one go.

After two beers, Ryan feels buzzed, on his way to drunk. He’s coming out of the kitchen with his third when his phone starts ringing, where it sits, facedown on the couch. Ryan hits the wall with his shoulder, and is still groaning a little when he picks up his cell to answer it.

There’s a beat of silence before Shane asks him, “You okay?”

“I just nailed my shoulder, coming out of the kitchen.” Ryan sets his beer aside in favor of rubbing his arm.

“Will you survive or should I head on over to collect your soul?”

He says it so casually that it gives Ryan pause for a moment, and then he huffs a laugh, says, “You’re a dick.” It comes out a little harder than he meant for it to.

But Shane—fucking Shane—hears what he doesn’t say there. Ryan can hear the reverb of his own breathing, rattling in the speaker. 

“I thought you’d want space, after this afternoon.”

“I don’t want space.”

“You should have said.”

“You left before I could say anything,” Ryan grumbles, rubbing at his face; his skin feels warm and a little tacky with drying sweat. 

“Would you have?”

Ryan pauses, tries to think about that one. He lies down on the couch and closes his eyes. 

“Probably not.” Shane makes a noise like _see?_ “Still don’t –“

“You want me to come over?”

“I don’t know. I can handle it.”

“Every time I show you something, you seem to need time on your own to process,” Shane says, perfectly reasonable. “I thought you’d want space.”

Ryan rubs his face again. “You’re not wrong. I should have said something, but I didn’t.”

“I can come over,” Shane tells him, his voice quiet and sincere in the way that always makes Ryan’s chest ache a little.

“It’s kinda late.”

“I make my own bedtime, Ryan.”

Ryan laughs, turning onto his side and balancing his phone on his cheek, closing his eyes. It doesn’t work too well but he’s too tired to move it.

“Probably just gonna pass out,” Ryan tells him.

“Did you drink any water?”

“No.” Shane makes an unimpressed sound. “I’ll be fine. I’m gonna fall asleep while I’m talking to you.”

“Well, I can’t think of a single better way to drift off than listening to my dulcet tones.”

Ryan hums to himself. “Yeah. Not so bad.”

There’s a stretch of silence where Ryan actually almost falls asleep, before Shane speaks again. “I’m sorry about today.”

“Don’t be. We actually know that it works, now.”

“Yeah.” It’s only one word but Ryan thinks he can hear how pleased Shane is when he says it. 

Ryan can’t imagine what it must have been like for Shane, up until now, never able to really connect with anyone. He must have been so lonely. Ryan knuckles away the dampness in his eyes before it can turn into anything more embarrassing. He still has to sniff before he can speak, however.

“Go to bed, Ry,” Shane says, his voice quiet.

“Too tired.”

“That couch’ll fuck your neck up. I’ve slept on it, before.”

“You have supernatural muscles; you don’t get to complain.”

“Yeah, but I have to listen to _you_ complain, because we both work tomorrow.” 

Ryan huffs. “You mean you won’t cure my hangover?”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Yeah, you can,” Ryan says around a yawn. “You’ve gotten pretty good at the healing thing.”

Shane is quiet for a moment, like he’s mulling it over. “I think it’s probably that I’ve just gotten good at healing you, in particular.”

Something about that makes Ryan’s whole body feel warm. “’s the bond,” Ryan murmurs, his words slurring together as he drifts closer and closer to sleep.

“It’s our bond,” Shane agrees, his voice fond. Ryan hums again. “Go to sleep, Ry.”

Ryan thinks that he says he loves him, but it might just be entirely in his head. He figures that Shane knows it, anyway.

 

\--

 

Ryan isn’t sure what wakes him. When he opens his eyes, he doesn’t immediately know where he is. His neck hurts and his head is pounding, pressure like a vise grip tightening around his temples; he almost throws up. The room is hot, uncomfortably so, which is weird, because it’s still spring and, even in California, it shouldn’t be this warm, right now.

He groans, bringing his hands up to cradle his head, his phone thumping to the floor as he moves.

“Fuck me,” he rasps, pressing against his temples. His head is going to explode. This is not normal pain.

Ryan fumbles blindly for his phone, on the floor. He needs to call someone. Maybe he’s having a brain aneurism or something; he doesn’t know what that’s supposed to feel like, but this feels emergency room worthy.

He doesn’t realize that there’s a sound like ringing in his ears, until it stops abruptly. Then his hearing goes out. Like that feeling before your ears pop on a plane and everything sounds muffled, like it’s coming from far away or underwater. He works his jaw, trying to make his ears pop, his heart absolutely racing with panic, as he finally curls his fingers around his phone.

Opening his eyes through pure force of will, he finds himself squinting at the screen as he struggles to unlock it. His hand is shaking so hard that the home button won’t read his thumbprint. The distinct feeling of his nose starting to bleed comes on suddenly, and very quickly there is blood running down the sides of his face, thick and hot and absolutely terrifying him. He has no idea what the fuck is happening to him.

Ryan’s phone starts to vibrate in his hand, Shane’s name lighting up the screen, but the brightness hurts his eyes, and he drops it again.

Then, it’s like time stops. 

Ryan sees movement in the semi-darkness of his living room. There is a figure there, something very clearly looming. The air is fragmented around it, like heatwaves around a fire. It’s dark and big, and every hair on Ryan’s body stands on end, like his fight or flight senses are both telling him _fucking run_ at the same time.

There are no discernable features, let alone solid shape, but Ryan gets the impression of something like antlers branching out from the top. He can feel himself being watched. His heart is pounding so hard; he seriously thinks he’s about to stroke out from fear. He tries to push himself away from it, his thoughts coming slowly and his reactions even slower than that. He’s almost paralyzed with fear and pain.

Ryan tries to get to his feet—he needs to get _away_ —but his legs don’t hold and he falls off the couch, landing painfully on his knees, and banging his forearm on the corner of the coffee table. It’s the same arm he broke in the car accident, and it hurts so fucking bad, bolts of pain lancing up and down his forearm. 

Ryan is going to fucking die on his living room floor, he’s sure of it.

Then, just as suddenly as it all started, everything very abruptly stops.

All of it.

When he looks, the figure is gone, the deafness in his ears has ceased, and everything is so goddamn quiet. Ryan can hear everything; his racing heartbeat, his own breath, the traffic outside, the creak of the floor beneath him as he turns from his knees and pushes himself back against the wall. 

Ryan isn’t sure that he’s even alive, right now. He’s cradling his arm against his chest, his entire body is shaking, his head throbbing. Everything hurts and he has never been more scared in his entire life. His phone continues to buzz, over and over on the floor, but he can’t make himself move more than to draw his knees up close and fold his arms between his thighs and his chest. Every time he sniffs, he tastes blood, and the room is still so goddamn hot that sweat is dripping over his forehead and stinging his eyes. 

He has no idea how long he sits there, frozen with panic, before there is a pounding on his door that absolutely scares the shit out of him. Ryan’s heart is off and racing again as he jumps, eyes darting toward the sound. 

“Ryan!” Shane’s voice comes, loud but muffled through the wood. “Ryan, let me in!” The doorknob jiggles and Ryan thinks absently that he might just break it off if Ryan doesn’t open the door for him.

Getting to his feet feels surreal. He didn’t think his legs would support him, but it doesn’t feel like his own doing. He doesn’t feel like he’s in control of himself right now; it’s like another kind of out-of-body experience, and Ryan doesn’t feel anything except the need to get to Shane. 

The door almost hits him when it swings open, and then Shane is there, pushed up into his space and cradling his head in his hands.

“Are you okay?” he asks in a rush. His eyes are pure black, looking at Ryan and then hastily turning his head to peer around the room.

Ryan can’t think enough to form words. He grips at Shane’s wrists, after he closes the door and turns on the hall light. Shane touches him with his giant, warm hands, and even though Ryan still feels like his body is on fire, he doesn’t want him to stop.

“What happened?” Shane asks, guiding him into the kitchen. 

When Shane lets go to turn on the light, Ryan sinks down to the floor, and puts his back to the corner of the cabinets. He’s so goddamn hot and the floor is so cold. He’s still shaking when Shane sits beside him and hands him a water bottle; a hand on his elbow steadies the shaking of his arm. It reminds him of the hospital, after the accident, and the thought makes his head pound. 

“Oh, fuck,” he rasps, pressing his forehead to his palm.

“Ryan, talk to me,” Shane says, voice quiet and urgent. 

“I don’t know what it was. It was just _there_ , when I woke up. Everything was hot and my head felt like it was being crushed and—“ he cuts himself off to touch the skin under his nose, still wet and tacky with blood. He looks at Shane, whose eyes have gone back to normal. “What the fuck was that? How did you—“

“I could feel it.”

“How?”

Shane touches the middle of his own chest. “You were in danger.”

Ryan stares at him. His heart is still beating so hard that it feels like it’s going to break through his ribcage. He can’t calm down, not even with Shane right beside him.

“You’re okay,” Shane tells him firmly, hand cupping the side of his neck. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay! Nothing is okay, right now!”

“It is,” Shane insists. “I’ve got you. Just—wait here, a second.”

Ryan grabs for him, his right arm burning red-hot with pain as he does. “No, no, no, where are you going?”

Shane holds his wrists with both hands, his touch strangely gentle. “I’m gonna get something to clean you up with.”

“I don’t need to be cleaned up, I need you to tell me what the fuck that was,” Ryan says, getting increasingly louder as he speaks. “You said I was in danger,” he jabs at his own chest with a numb finger, “you could feel it.”

“Yes.”

“What _was_ that?”

Shane’s gaze searches his face and Ryan doesn’t look away; he feels like he’s on the edge of a mental break and Shane is giving him nothing to hold onto. 

Finally, Shane says, “A demon.”

Even though Ryan is pretty sure that he had known what Shane just confirmed for him, he is still stunned, and then equally terrified at the revelation. Shane’s shirt slips from his grasp as he stands. The faucet runs for a moment before Shane is back, sitting down beside him, holding the sink’s hand towel, damp and wrung out. He wipes carefully at Ryan’s face and Ryan watches as the towel goes from white to pink to red. It’s a lot of blood.

“Let me see your arm,” Shane says, once he’s tossed the towel into the sink.

Ryan feels like he’s being run on autopilot as he holds his shaking arm out to Shane. Hands wrap around his forearm and the familiar sensation of Shane’s healing feels like it’s seeping into his bones. The ache there eases, lessening from the sharp bite of a recent break to something reminiscent of an old sprain. Not great but not as bad as it was. Ryan rests his arm on his thigh.

“Why would another demon—“ Ryan cuts himself off. He doesn’t even know what he wants to say or ask. He’s still afraid, even with Shane right beside him, assuring him that they’re both safe. He scrubs at his face with his other hand. “Jesus christ.”

“I didn’t realize,” Shane says.

“Realize what?”

“Any of it. The nosebleeds,” Shane shakes his head, “I thought it was because of me; what we’ve been trying to do with my sight. I didn’t even consider it being something else.”

Ryan touches his nostrils, still cold and a little bit wet from the washcloth, but at least not leaking blood anymore. 

“That thing’s been causing my nosebleeds and headaches?”

“You’ve been having headaches, too?”

“Answer the fucking question, Shane.” 

Shane lets out a frustrated huff of breath. “Yes, probably. Presence and influence and all that shit.”

“Why was it here?”

“Hard to say. Especially since you’re marked as mine.” A shiver runs through Ryan’s body and it’s not as pleasant a feeling as it usually is when Shane says things like that. Shane shakes his head. “I’m being challenged,” he says quietly, mostly to himself.

“Over _me_?” Ryan asks, incredulous. “Seriously, what the fuck is going on? Why would it even come here? Can it hurt me?”

“No.”

“It almost made my fucking head explode, Shane. Is it trying to possess me?”

“I don’t _know_ , Ryan,” Shane says forcefully. “I don’t know how it found you. I don’t know what it wants. The motivation of all demons is inherently selfish; you’re just appealing to it, for some reason.”

“Fuck. Jesus fucking christ,” Ryan groans, rubbing at his face. “How is this my life? Why am I so attractive to demons?” He holds his hands out. “Because I sleep in their houses and dance on their bridges and act like a fucking asshole with you at every available opportunity. I brought this on myself.”

Shane has the fucking audacity to let out a little laugh as he takes hold of one of Ryan’s hands.

“Ryan—“

“Really? Is it really fuckin’ funny?”

“I’m not going to let you get hurt. I will protect you.” Shane sits beside him, pressed together from shoulder to hip to leg. “I’ll take care of this.”

“Oh fuck you,” Ryan says, letting his head thunk back against the cabinet behind him; the overhead light hurts his eyes and he pinches them shut. His head is still ringing. “I’m in this, you dillhole. I am so far into this. Balls-fucking-deep into it. I’m not letting you do jack shit alone.”

Shane lets out a breath and turns to look at him. “You’re not immortal,” he says quietly.

“Then we’ll just have to not die. That sound like a plan?”

“Fuck,” Shane whispers, half-laughing. “What happened to you? Where’s my meek, little, wind hunter?”

“He never fucking existed. Now let’s get the fuck out of here. I can’t sleep here, tonight. What if it comes back?”

Shane shakes his head. “It won’t come back.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know demons and there’s a certain flair for the dramatic. Did it touch you?”

“Not physically, but it was doing something to my head.” Ryan holds up a slightly-shaky fist between them. “It almost popped like a fucking grape.”

Shane pushes himself to his feet and hauls Ryan up as well. “This was posturing.” He strokes his hand down the back of Ryan’s neck and nods toward the hall. “Go pack some clothes and your retainer, or whatever.”

Ryan gives him a flat look. “I’m gonna reserve my comments about straight teeth, because I really want to get the fuck out of here. But trust me when I say that they’re coming later. It’s all right up here, big guy,” Ryan says, tapping his temple.

A hand takes hold of his wrist and pulls him back around, before he can leave the kitchen. Shane draws him in with it and cups his jaw with the other hand. Ryan meets him halfway, pushing up onto his toes so that he can kiss back harder. His entire body hurts and he’s probably going to have a migraine tomorrow, but all he feels when he touches Shane is relief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to AngeDemoniaque for letting me know that I've been handling bloody noses incorrectly my entire life :*


	3. Chapter 3

Ryan wakes up sweating. Shane uses a down comforter all year round, and the rest of his bedding consists of a multitude of sheets and blankets that he uses to boil himself alive, apparently. Ryan kicks at the pile of covers that he’s nestled under, until he can feel a rush of cool air on his legs. It’s a nice feeling, falling asleep so warm and comfortable, but he always wakes up a sweat-sticky mess. 

Beside him, Shane turns his head on the pillow, awake and looking alert, like he hasn’t slept at all. Ryan forgets sometimes that he doesn’t need to eat or sleep because he seems to take so much joy in both activities. Now, Ryan thinks he was awake all night, waiting or watching or both.

A hand reaches over to run through his hair and Ryan closes his eyes at the gentleness of the touch. His head is still pounding faintly from the inhuman pressure he’d felt on it last night. He closes his eyes again, face half-turned into the pillow.

“Feels good,” he mumbles.

Shane is silent for a beat before he rolls onto his side and sets his other hand to the base of Ryan’s neck, squeezing gently. The lingering ache at his temples starts to fade, trickling down the back of his head like warm water, toward Shane’s hand.

Ryan groans, feeling like he wants to curl up and just let Shane touch him forever.

“If we’re going to work, we need to get up,” Shane says, quietly.

“I really don’t want to.”

“We don’t have to.”

Ryan shakes his head, opening his eyes to look at Shane again. His hair is a little wild, sticking up all over his head; Ryan wants to smooth it down but nothing short of a shower is going to fix that mess. He yawns so wide that his jaw cracks. 

“We should go.”

“If that’s what you wanna do.”

Ryan rolls onto his back and rubs at his face, watching Shane sit up and reach for his glasses. It’s a little bit surreal whenever he sees Shane doing something so mundane—so human—like this. Seeing him react to banging his knee, as if it hurt him, or sneezing, or acting like a baby with spicy foods is equal parts strange and amusing, and unfortunately endearing. 

Shane turns to look at him. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you sure you want to go in?”

Ryan shakes his head against the pillow. “I don’t have the PTO for another mental holiday.”

“You look like shit.”

Ryan cracks his eyes open to glare up at Shane. “Wow, you’re really amping up your pillow talk.”

“I mean, you look adorable,” he amends.

“Too late. Your ass is on the couch, tonight.”

“It’s my couch,” Shane says with a quiet laugh. He leans down like he’s going in for a kiss, and Ryan turns so he gets his cheek. 

“Ohh.” Shane sucks in a breath through his teeth. “Swing and a miss.”

Ryan huffs into the pillow and then heaves himself up into a sitting position. “Don’t try to ply me with sports talk, now.”

Shane leans in and kisses him before Ryan can react, and then climbs out of bed, leaving him sitting there, mouth hanging slightly open for a moment. 

“Shower?” Shane asks. He pulls his shirt up over his head and tosses it in the direction of his laundry pile. Ryan gets caught up staring at his chest for a moment too long, even as Shane shucks his pajama bottoms. Shane snaps his fingers. “My eyes are up here.”

Shaking his head, Ryan swings his legs over the side of the bed, turning away from Shane and hiding his heated cheeks in the process. He’s already stripped down to his boxers but Shane sleeps bundled up, now that Ryan is aware of what he is; he says he doesn’t like to be cold. 

Ryan bends over to pick up Shane’s pajama bottoms and chucks them at the rest of the laundry, before heading to the bathroom. He makes it just in time to watch as Shane steps into the shower. No part of him attempts to not watch Shane’s ass as he moves. 

Ryan shuts and locks the bathroom door behind himself. There really isn’t any reason to do it, because if something were to come for him, again, a flimsy, little lock isn’t going to do anything; but it makes him feel better to shut both him and Shane away, so he does it. He takes a minute to brush his teeth before he strips off his own boxers and pushes the shower curtain aside. Shane’s dripping hand is there instantly and Ryan takes it, stepping into the tub with him. 

There really isn’t room for two grown men in here, and Ryan feels undeniably awkward about every little movement that he makes. They’ve been naked before, obviously, in both sexual and non-sexual situations, for one reason or another (their workplace has never been normal) but it still feels a little bit strange.

It’s incredibly intimate and Ryan really can’t wait until they’re at the stage where things this domestic just feel normal.

Shane maneuvers them both around so that Ryan is standing directly under the spray. The water is a little too hot, but Ryan doesn’t turn it down. He closes his eyes and ducks his head, getting his hair wet. He should have showered last night, but he just wanted to get into bed and pass out, once they got back to Shane’s place. Not that he’d been able to fall asleep until Shane had forced him to relax with his weird, demon mojo.

When he opens his eyes, Shane is holding a bottle of shampoo in front of him. Ryan takes it and lathers up his head without a word. His hair is still clumped together with product and dried sweat, and it feels so good to dig into it and scrub it clean. He uses the leftover suds on his hands to wash his face, in the absence of his own face wash.

Even though Shane had cleaned him up last night, the lather on his hands is still pink with leftover, dried blood. He rinses them off and ducks his head under the spray again.

Shane’s hands start to rub over his shoulders, then down his back, washing him with something that smells undeniably like Shane, but Ryan couldn’t name the fragrance if he tried. He braces a hand against the wall and keeps his head bent forward, water running off his cheeks and nose, forcing him to keep his eyes closed as he lets Shane take care of him.

It’s a strange thought that has warmth curling in his belly, and he wonders idly if it’s because Shane is healing him again; but he doesn’t think that’s it. He huffs a laugh, righting himself as Shane takes a half-step in and presses against his back. Hands slide around Ryan’s sides and up his stomach to his chest.

There’s a hopeful tug in his groin but Ryan is stretched just a little too thin by his near-death-experience last night to get hard right now. So he just lets himself lean his weight into Shane and tip his head back on his shoulder. Wet lips press to his cheek as fingers ghost over his nipples. His breath hitches.

“If you get me hard, right now, it’ll be the most confusing boner I’ve ever had in my life.”

He can feel Shane’s smile against his cheek. “Confusing because—“

“Of the other demon that tried to kill me last night.”

Shane’s hands go still on his stomach. “I won’t let that happen again,” Shane says seriously. Ryan shakes his head, intent on saying something like _it’s not your fault_ , but Shane must know what’s about to come out of his mouth, because fingers press against Ryan’s lips before he can even say it. “I won’t let you out of my sight, until I deal with this.”

Ryan pulls his hand away by the wrist. “And how do you intend on doing that?”

“Haven’t figured it out yet,” Shane says, his voice a low rumble by Ryan’s ear. “But once I find it, I’m going to rip it apart.”

Ryan opens his eyes, staring at the showerhead as Shane’s hands start to move over his skin again. 

“Can you kill a demon?”

“Yes.”

“How?” Shane visibly hesitates. “I’m not going to kill you.”

He can feel Shane’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. “A couple of ways. If you know its true name, you can send it back to hell, but that won’t kill it.” 

True name. 

Ryan is rocked by the sudden realization that he doesn’t know what Shane’s actual name is. His lips part to ask, but he hesitates, and then Shane shakes his head. 

“Please don’t ask.”

“Why can’t I know?”

“It’s not you I don’t trust. If someone or something pulls it out of you, then I’m in danger. So don’t ask me.” Shane’s voice cracks almost imperceptibly when he adds, “Please.”

Ryan bites his own lips for a moment and then he nods. “Switch,” he says, indicating their positions by pulling away from Shane. “Wash your nasty hair.”

They rotate themselves carefully around one another, and Ryan resumes the colder position behind Shane. His body blocks most of the water, so Ryan leans into him, chest against his back, and rests his cheek on Shane’s shoulder blade. 

“Feel free to give _me_ a confusing, morning, shower boner,” Shane says as he shampoos his own head.

Ryan snorts a laugh, setting his hands on Shane’s thin hips. “How else can you do it?”

“Hmm?”

He clears his throat. “How else can you kill a demon?”

Shane’s hands go still for a moment before resuming their scrubbing movement. “You’re making me nervous.”

And if that isn’t the weirdest thing Ryan has ever heard in his life, he doesn’t know what is. Him, human Ryan, making a demon nervous. This literal and figurative reversal in their positions, leaving Shane the vulnerable one, makes Ryan feel overwhelmingly brave, and unfortunately weak in the goddamn knees over Shane’s trust in him. He squeezes Shane’s hips.

“Shane,” he says quietly.

“Yeah?”

“I would never hurt you.”

The silence between them only lasts a moment but it feels like it stretches on forever. Ryan’s heart thumps against his ribs as Shane reaches down to wrap around his hand and squeeze.

“I know, Ry.”

Ryan closes his eyes and presses his forehead against the dip of Shane’s spine. He lets out a slow breath and counts to ten.

 

\--

 

They’re already massively late for work, as it is, so they take a Lyft to Ryan’s favorite coffee place downtown, instead of heading straight in. Another half hour or so isn’t going to matter, at this point. Ryan’s nerves are a little too shot for caffeine, at the moment, but he doesn’t think he’ll survive the withdrawal headache he’ll get without it. 

It’s a long hike in, but Ryan appreciates the mid-morning sun on his face and the constant breeze blowing from behind them. Shane holds his hand, leeching the pain out of his arm whenever it spikes. He doesn’t think it’s broken, again—or if it was, Shane healed it and now it just simply aches—but it’s still smarting from where he banged it off the coffee table, last night.

While they wait at the crosswalk, kitty-corner to the office, Shane says, “If you destroy the core, of a demon, it will kill it,” apropos of nothing. The woman in front of them looks halfway over her shoulder at them before turning around again.

Ryan squeezes his hand and tugging at him. “Maybe not on the fucking _sidewalk?_ ” he presses as the crosswalk light changes.

Shane holds him back, and Ryan is shoved at by multiple people as they grumble their way around the two of them. He follows Shane toward the side of the nearest building and meets his gaze.

“What the fuck was that?”

“I didn’t answer your question, before.”

“Is _this_ the place to do it? That woman heard you.”

“She just thinks we’re weird.”

“You are definitely fucking weird.”

Shane just looks at him, his head tilted a bit to the side, in the way that makes Ryan wonder how he ever missed that something was fundamentally different about Shane. He picks at the sleeve on his coffee, with his forefinger. 

“Okay, so?”

“If the core is destroyed, there’s nothing to rebuild.”

“Can you do that?” Shane nods. “ _Have_ you done that?”

“I’ve done a lot of things,” Shane says, watching a redheaded woman pass by. She gives the two of them an odd look before moving on.

“Well, that’s vague.”

Shane meets his gaze again. “I don’t think now’s the time to get into the atrocities I may or may not have committed.”

“When have you killed other demons?” Ryan asks quietly. 

“Hell isn’t free of in-fighting,” Shane tells him, finally lowering his voice. “But it was a long, _long_ time ago.”

Ryan doesn’t know what to say to that, so he nods. Letting go of his hand, Shane loops his arm around Ryan’s shoulders and pulls him closer. 

“I’m telling you I can do this and that you don’t need to worry.”

Ryan fists his free hand in Shane’s ugly plaid shirt. “What if it’s stronger than you?” he asks, voicing the concern he’s felt ever since Shane confirmed that the thing that attacked him was indeed another demon. Shane doesn’t say anything and Ryan tugs harder at his shirt, pulling him closer. “ _Shane._ ”

“I’m strong enough.”

“Jesus fuck, seriously? Could you be anymore vague?”

“What you know, here, can definitely hurt you. Just trust me, with this. I’ll take care of it.”

“That’s not good enough, for me. I am _this close_ to losing my shit, after last night,” Ryan says, holding up his finger and thumb barely a millimeter apart. “Why is this even happening?”

Shane pushes his hand down. “I’m telling you, I don’t know. I don’t know what it wants or why, or if it’s pissed at you or me, or _what_. But I _will handle it_.”

Ryan is so angry, so pissed off at Shane withholding from him, that he suddenly wants to be nowhere near him. He heads back to the crosswalk, without another word, and waits there, knowing that Shane is beside him. He has to talk himself out of crushing his coffee cup in his hand, because wouldn’t _that_ be the perfect way to continue this shit streak of luck?

“Why are you mad at me, now?” Shane asks when they step into the elevator.

“Because you’re lying to me.”

“I’ve never lied to you.”

“We have different definitions of ‘lying’.”

“Don’t be a fucking infant, Ryan. I’m trying to protect you, here.”

Ryan would love to say that he doesn’t need Shane to protect him from anything, but if last night was just a teaser of true demonic power, then Ryan absolutely needs protection from it. He again has to talk himself out of annihilating the cup in his hand.

“Ryan,” Shane says, as the elevator slows to a stop.

“Forget it.”

The doors aren’t even all the way open before Ryan steps out and heads for his desk. It doesn’t do much to give him space, since they sit right fucking next to one another, but Ryan has the defense of putting his headphones on and shutting him out. 

It’s easier to lose himself in his work than he thought it would be. They’re so close to being done filming the latest season of Unsolved, and then they’re moving on to True Crime again. Ryan has plenty to work on, to distract himself with, and he does, focusing on his preemptive research before he passes his notes and ideas off to their actual research team. 

He has no idea how long he’s been at it when Messages lights up, in the taskbar, with a new text. It’s Shane, naturally, sitting two feet away from him, but Ryan reads it anyway.

 _I get that you’re pissed off but I’m not the one you should be angry with._ And then another. _I don’t even know why you’re upset. I can’t read your thoughts, if I’m not in your head._

Ryan sets his fingers on the keyboard and tries to decide what he wants to even say. He taps the keys for a moment, mulling it over. Then another message comes through.

_If it’s a human thing, you’re gonna have to help me out with this one._

Ryan slowly slides his headphones off to rest around his neck. Shane takes his off entirely, setting them down on the desk, then looks at Ryan. 

“You know the NSA agent reading our chat history is probably really fucking confused, right now.”

Shane huffs a little laugh. “They’ll probably just think I’m a psychic. Or a furry. Psychic furry.”

Ryan snorts and then closes his eyes and rubs them with both hands, slumping a little in his chair, as Shane moves incrementally closer. “I hate it when I’m pissed and you make me laugh.”

“Part of my charm.” Shane holds a hand out between them but Ryan doesn’t move to take it, letting it linger in the air. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you, Ryan.”

“I don’t either,” Ryan admits quietly. “I don’t like feeling so totally helpless. I want to hear a plan, not just ‘trust me, I got it’.”

This conversation is entirely too private to be had at work, surrounded by so many people who have no idea what’s really going on between them, or what’s really out there. But that’s what they’re doing now, apparently. Shane leans his forearms against his thighs and lets his hands dangle between them.

“The plan is for me to just rip it apart, when it shows up again. That’s the entire plan, Ry. I can’t just… sniff it out, like some kind of demonic bloodhound.”

One of the girls to Shane’s left gets up and walks past them, eyes trained on her phone. Ryan’s heart skips a beat at the thought of them being overheard. 

“This isn’t the place to talk about it,” Ryan tells him.

Shane gestures at Ryan’s computer before turning back to his own. Ryan sighs and slips his headphones back on, waiting for Shane to finish typing whatever it is he needs to say.

_There’s no reason for anything to come after you or me. Not knowing that is fucking up the why and the how part._

Ryan types back, _How can you be so sure that you’ll beat it, then?_

_Bravado._

_Hilarious._

_Do you know why salt hurts us?_

Ryan’s brow furrows at the sudden change in topic. He glances at Shane before looking back at his computer. _No???_

_It’s the purity and the intention to protect yourself._

_So it works because I believe it will…_

_Something like that._

Ryan glares at Shane out of the corner of his eye. _You are cryptic as shit and I hate you._

A foot nudges his under their desks and Ryan kicks back at it, leaving them pressed together, out of sight. 

_You love me._

_You can’t prove that._

_Don’t need to. I BELIEVE it._

_Idiot._

Shane taps his forearm and Ryan pushes his headphones off of one ear, looking at him. Shane’s fingers wrap around his armrest and roll his chair closer, until it bumps his own. They sit there, looking at each other for long enough that Ryan’s heart starts to beat just a little bit harder, and then Shane takes hold of his neck and kisses him. There’s a sparse round of whistles and hollering from some of their coworkers as Ryan kisses him back. He holds up his hand to hopefully block the straight-on view of the two of them, but he doesn’t care all that much who might be watching.

“Love you,” Shane whispers, barely audible, with their lips still brushing.

Ryan kisses him again, hoping that Shane feels the _me too_ in it. He pulls away and scoots back to his own desk, ignoring the heat in his cheeks and everyone around them. When he licks his lips, Ryan can taste Shane; he drags his teeth over them and then rubs the side of his hand over his mouth.

He isn’t going to get fuck-all done today and he knows it.

 

\--

 

As much as Ryan hates feeling like he’s being babysat by Shane following him everywhere, he’s still grateful for it. Ryan knows he’s being paranoid, constantly looking over his shoulder and feeling the prickling sensation on his neck that tells him he’s being watched. He knows he is. _Something_ is out there, watching him, and it scares the hell out of him because he doesn’t know _why_ or what it intends to do if it catches him off guard.

Shane isn’t far away, at any given time, always nearby and always keeping an eye on him. 

He’s only gone back to his apartment once, since the night he was attacked, and Shane had gone with him. Ryan watched him walk the perimeter of the living room, looking up and down and occasionally reaching out with his hands to feel something Ryan couldn’t see, eyes blacker than the ocean at night and just as unforgiving. He’d finally drawn to a stop in the exact place that Ryan had seen the other demon. 

Ryan felt cold with panic, watching Shane look around himself with no discernable emotion, aside from residual anger, on his face. After a long, silent moment, he’d finally blinked his eyes back to their normal shade of brown. 

Shane didn’t offer any explanation and Ryan didn’t ask.

The drive back to Shane’s place is fairly quiet. They stop for pizza, and other than discussing toppings, they don’t speak much at all. Ryan feels weirdly uncomfortable in his own skin. He has no idea what Shane can sense and what he can’t, but from the lack of volunteered information, Ryan assumes that it isn’t much. He doesn’t feel brave enough to ask until they’re both stuffed full and slumped together on the couch.

Ryan runs his fingers through Shane’s hair, over and over, until Shane is staring trancelike at the TV. 

“Shane.”

“Hmm?”

“How long, do you think, before it shows up again?”

The hand on Ryan’s thigh squeezes. “It won’t, while I’m around.”

“You can’t spend your entire life attached at the hip with me.”

“I told you, I’ll take care of it.”

“Right,” Ryan says, slouching a bit further. He reminds himself that if Shane won’t tell him, then it’s probably for his own safety. But it’s cold comfort and Ryan feels like he’s one frayed nerve away from splitting right down the middle. He has never been so actively stressed, for such a continuous length of time, before. He doesn’t know how much more waiting he can take, and it’s only been three days.

Shane shifts, like he’s going to sit up, so Ryan gently fists the hand in his hair, holding him in place against his shoulder. He doesn’t want to argue about this.

“We do the last investigation of the season Saturday,” he says.

“I know.”

“Should we cancel it?”

Shane is quiet for a considerable length of time. Ryan resumes the movement of his hand, carding his fingers through Shane’s hair, over and over again.

Eventually, Shane says, “I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

“Do you—“

“Stop,” Shane says, sitting upright, despite the hand Ryan tightens in his hair again. “You’re gonna make yourself insane, if you don’t stop thinking about this.”

“What the shit am I supposed to think about, then? There’s a fucking demon after me and the best my boyfriend, who is also a demon, will tell me, is that he’s going to beat the shit out of it, when it shows up again.” He rakes both hands through his own hair, a frustrated movement. “I feel like I should be doing something to protect myself, but I don’t know _what_. And you’re not giving me anything to go on, and if I end up going insane, then it’s your fault for not doing anything to stop it!”

Ryan has to take a deep breath when he finishes spewing out his rant. Shane is staring at him like he thinks Ryan might explode at any given moment, and it only serves to make Ryan feel like he’s overreacting. He bends over with a groan and covers his face with his hands, elbows on his knees.

“Don’t look at me like I’m crazy.”

“You’re not crazy and I don’t think you are,” Shane says. “Look, Ryan,” Shane pulls one of his hands away from his face to squeeze it between his own. “I _promise_ you, I will take care of this.”

Ryan groans into his other hand before he rakes it back through his hair again and looks Shane dead in the eye. “Don’t promise me shit. You said it’s like making a deal.”

“It is.”

“Fuck,” Ryan groans, stretching out the word as he leans back against the couch cushions again. He rubs at his eyes until they’re watering under his fingertips.

Shane follows him, setting his elbow on the back of the couch and his cheek in his palm. Ryan looks up at him, feeling a little bit nauseous and a lot wary. 

“I know this is fucked up, but it’s not as terrible as you’re building it up in your head to be.” Ryan opens his mouth to rebuff Shane but he’s cut off before he can start. “Trust me. I _need_ you to trust me to handle this.” 

Ryan stares at him for a long time, the light from the television flickering ever-changing shadows across Shane’s face. He’s so stupidly good looking. 

He heaves a sigh, blowing the breath out slowly. “Fine,” he says, rubbing his clammy palms against his thighs. “I trust you.”

Shane cups his cheek with his hand and kisses Ryan’s temple before leaning his forehead against it for a moment. Ryan closes his eyes and reaches up to wrap his fingers around Shane’s wrist. 

“Thank you,” Shane says, sitting back. “Tell me about where we’re going, this weekend.”

Ryan watches as something explodes on screen and then meets Shane’s eyes in the dark. He doesn’t feel better, no matter how frequently Shane stresses that he has the situation under control. Ryan is afraid and there isn’t a damn thing he can do about it, himself. He has no choice but to trust Shane. And even though he does, he still feels a deep-seated stress that will continue to keep him on edge until the other demon is dealt with.

He lets go of another breath, through his nose, and starts telling Shane about their final destination of the season.

 

\--

 

Stir-crazy doesn’t even begin to describe how Ryan is feeling, by the end of the week. Crowded, claustrophobic, fed-up; just a few descriptors he can think of off the top of his head. 

He hasn’t had a moment to himself since Monday night, and he’s itching for two seconds to just _breathe_ on his own. Shane is always _right there_ , watching him and watching over him and it’s starting to make Ryan crazy as fuck. But whenever he remembers _why_ Shane is never more than ten feet away from him at any given time, his heart jumps right up into his throat.

Ryan has spent more than enough time, in his life, being afraid of things, or in places that scare the living shit out of him; but he’s never felt that genuine rush of pure, cold panic through his veins like he does when he remembers that night, in his living room. That demon watching him, hurting him, nearly crushing his head without even touching him. It makes his hands shake and his stomach twist to the point of nausea. 

He’s never been this terrified of anything before, and he doesn’t know what Shane is planning to _do_ about it because he’s been tightlipped on the whole thing. Shane says it’s one of those things where he’s safer not knowing what’s going on beyond where he can see. Knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to accept. It’s making him feel like he’s going absolutely fucking insane just sitting around, looking over his shoulder and constantly double checking that Shane is nearby. 

So on top of everything else, he feels like a total wimp and he’s sick of it.

On Friday, he’s tempted to work through lunch, even though the company is having catered food brought in, for some reason or another, that Ryan can’t be bothered enough to inquire about. Still, he wants to skip it, despite the promise of free, good food, until Shane pulls his headphone away from his ear and whispers, “Sushi,” to him. 

Ryan grudgingly follows.

They eat outside, where it is entirely too hot for spring, and Shane is radiating heat beside him like a portable campfire. Ryan is hot and uncomfortable, sweat prickling the back of his neck and the small of his back. He’s already on edge from literally every single thing going on in his life right now, including having to fly out to Seattle tonight. It’s the first time, since the show started, that he doesn’t want to go on the investigation. 

The thought makes him feel guilty. He knows he should be grateful for every single opportunity that’s being given to him to live this dream of his, with Shane at his side, but he’s just so tired. He’s overwhelmed. And there’s no feasible solution to the problem. No end in sight. 

He picks at his food, spending more time moping up sweat from his hairline than he does eating. Shane doesn’t outright stare at him but Ryan sees every extended, sidelong glance sent his way; and even that begins to grate at his already strained nerves. He feels trapped, like a caged animal with its hackles up.

“You wanna head in?” Shane asks after watching him prod at his uramaki until it falls apart on his plate.

Ryan taps his chopsticks together a few times before he sets them down on the plate. “You go ahead,” he says, “I still need to… not be inside, for a bit. I need some air.”

Shane’s head tilts incrementally and then he glances around, but no one is paying attention to the two of them, too engrossed in their own conversations and food. “I’ll wait with you.”

Ryan shakes his head. “I’m fine, Shane.”

“I’m not leaving you alone.”

“There are twenty other people out here, right now. I’ll be fine.”

Shane sits upright, puffing up his chest like he does whenever he’s getting ready to argue. Ryan jabs him in the sternum with a single finger and Shane lets out a comical, “ _oof_ ,” sound, grabbing Ryan’s hand with both of his, lowering it to hang between them.

“I’m good, big guy.” Ryan folds his fingers around Shane’s hand and squeezes. “Trust me.” It’s nice to turn that one back around on Shane, and even more satisfying to watch Shane realize that that’s exactly what Ryan is doing.

He deflates a little, shoulders sagging, as the wind is let out of his sails.

“Fine.” Shane lets go of his hands and pats Ryan’s thigh before he stands up from the table. He gathers the remains of his lunch in one hand and squeezes Ryan’s shoulder with the other, patting him on the back as he walks away.

It’s an anxious gesture and it somehow manages to unnerve Ryan even further. 

He doesn’t watch Shane go. Ryan pushes his own plate and drink aside and plants his elbows on the table, pressing his face into his palms. He’s nauseous and it’s seriously way too fucking hot out, right now. His shirt is sticking to his back with a tacky layer of sweat that Ryan knows isn’t entirely from the heat. He feels gross. He’d pay top dollar to be able to just go jump off a dock into the ocean, right about now. 

The heels of his palms press harder against his eyes, making spots of color bloom to life behind his lids. He’s never been this tired in his entire life. Not even in college when he was pulling all-nighters, rushing to finish up his final video projects that would either allow him to graduate or sink his future in the industry entirely before it even began. 

“Hey, Ry.” A hand thumps against his back, making him almost come right out of his skin. He’s lucky he doesn’t yell out loud, barely keeping it back behind his teeth. Probably because he almost chokes to death on his inhale, but the details are unimportant. 

Steven has dropped down into Shane’s vacated seat, and he looks like Ryan has just scared the shit out of him and not the other way around. 

“Whoa, dude, chill. It’s just me,” he says, holding both hands up.

“Fuck off,” Ryan says without feeling. He wipes the sweat off his upper lip with one hand and takes off his baseball hat with the other, tossing it onto the table. His hair is limp with sweat; he feels like he’s burning up inside.

Steven is silent for a moment and Ryan can _feel_ that concerned gaze creeping over him. It shouldn’t be agitating but it is. 

“You okay? Steven asks at length.

“Peachy.”

“You don’t look peachy.”

“How do I look, then, Steven?” Ryan asks. He can hear the irritation in his own voice but he can’t seem to stop himself from interjecting it into every word.

“Like a plupple.”

Ryan blinks. “What?” The words register and then he lets out a loud bark of laughter, dissolving into a legitimate wheezy giggle when Steven starts laughing too. “God,” Ryan groans, wiping at his forehead again, “don’t tell me you watch that shit.”

“Every week,” Steven says. “It’s rich and compelling. Seriously, though, you okay? You look sick.”

“Thanks,” Ryan says, voice dry.

“You’re paler than Shane.”

“I must be dead, then.”

There’s a sharp tug in his chest and Ryan sucks in a quick breath through his nose, his hand reflexively coming up to rub at his heart. 

“Ryan—“

“Not dead,” he murmurs, closing his eyes, digging his knuckles into his ribs, harder and harder. It feels like he’s trying to placate the bond, to soothe it. “Totally alive.”

“You are freaking me out.”

Ryan huffs. “Makes two of us.”

Steven is quiet for a beat. “I don’t even know what to say to that. What’s going on with you?”

“I don’t know,” Ryan mumbles, the ache in his chest beginning to lessen. He wipes at the short, damp hair above his ear. “Maybe I am sick.”

“I think you—oh, dude, here,” Steven says, half out of his seat and leaning across the table, grabbing a napkin from a stack currently being held down by a rock. 

Ryan takes it with a raised eyebrow. “Thanks?”

Steven points at his own nose and then points to Ryan’s. “You got a—got a situation, there.”

“Oh, fuck, _seriously?_ ” Ryan grumbles, reaching up to wipe the blood from his nostrils with his free hand.

“Use the napkin, genius,” Steven says, stretching his freakishly long arms out to grab the entire stack, tumbling the rock right off the table.

Ryan has to smack his hands away when Steven tries to help with a wadded up napkin bundle of his own. “I got it,” he snaps.

Steven sits back down, looking at him with his eyebrows drawn together and crumpled napkins sticking out between the fingers of each hand. Ryan holds his gaze for several painfully long seconds before he rolls his eyes skyward and squints against the sunlight, tipping his head back. 

“What’s going on with you?” Steven asks.

“Nothing.”

“If you’re sick, you should go home.”

Ryan takes a breath and holds it before letting it go through his mouth. “I’m not sick.”

“You’re acting weird.”

“You’re weird.”

“Yeah, not the point.” Ryan snorts and it burns a little. He checks to see if his nose is still actively bleeding (it is), he tips his head forward, this time, and closes his eyes again. “You and Shane okay?”

That makes Ryan open his eyes and right himself, looking at Steven head-on. Despite everything, the snapchat videos of them dancing together at the club, the kisses Shane is surprising him with in front of their coworkers, and doing practically nothing at all to be discreet about their relationship, no one has straight up asked him about it yet. 

It makes something fond and familiar curl through his belly; he has to fight not to smile, even when a sharp spike of pain lances through his head, making him wince.

“We’re good.”

Steven starts to slowly tear strips into one of the napkins in his hands. “Good. That’s good.”

“You’re a regular poet.”

Steven balls up his napkin and tosses it at Ryan. “Don’t be rude.”

“Why are you _here_ , Steven?” Ryan asks, because he is rapidly running out of patience. He’s on reserves right now, and he doesn’t want to lose it on Steven when he’s generally one of the most harmless people Ryan knows. His intentions are about as pure and genuine as they come.

“I had an idea for a mashup video but it doesn’t really seem like a good time to hash out the details, right now.” He pushes himself up, expression that of a recently kicked puppy, and Ryan feels a fresh surge of guilt over being the one to put it on his face.

He grabs Steven’s forearm before he can get more than half a step away. 

“Hey, wait a sec.” Ryan tosses his bloody napkin over the remains of his food and looks up at him, squinting against the harsh sunlight. “I’m sorry.”

Steven shrugs a shoulder at him. “Don’t worry about it.”

Sniffing against the dampness of fresh blood around his nostrils, Ryan reaches for another napkin to stuff up under his nose. “I’ve got… a _lot_ of shit going on right now.” Steven holds his gaze, nodding his head like he understands. “And I’m not sleeping so I’m a cranky dick.”

“It’s cool.”

Ryan lets go of Steven’s arm because his palm is sweaty and it’s objectively disgusting. He wipes his hand on the side of his thigh and clears his throat. 

“Hit me up when we get back from Seattle, about your video. I’ll be in a better mood, once the shoot is done.”

“’kay,” Steven says, smiling again, easy-going as he ever is. “Take care of… that.” He gestures in the general direction of Ryan’s face. “Gonna be attracting vampires, instead of ghosts. I hear they’re a big thing in the Pacific Northwest.”

“Oh, that’s what we’re doing now? _Twilight_ references in the year 2019?”

“Don’t come back sparkling,” Steven says, wiggling his fingers in the air.

Ryan tosses his bloody napkin aside so that he has both hands free to flip Steven off. He receives and exaggerated kiss blown at him in turn. He watches Steven retreat, wandering off to toward a group of their coworkers and seamlessly inserting himself into their conversation. He watches for a moment, feeling an unfamiliar tug of loneliness in his stomach. Ryan doesn’t know what to make of that so he sets it aside, for the time being.

The blood under his nose is drying, leaving the skin above his lip feeling tight where it pulls at the bristle of his facial hair. With a sigh, he gathers up his mostly untouched lunch and pitches it in the trash before making his way back inside to the blessedly cool air of their office. 

The restroom is even cooler and it feels incredible on Ryan’s overheated skin. He doesn’t know why he’s so goddamn hot. His body is overheated, almost feverish, but nothing else aches, aside from the occasional sharp, stabbing pain that burns through his head every so often. Maybe he’s getting a migraine, or the flu, or bubonic plague, or god knows what else, at this point. 

He turns on the cold water tap and lets it run for a moment, looking at himself in the mirror. He really is pale. The hollows under his eyes are dark, standing out starkly against his sweat-sticky skin. Even the way his hair is drooping in lank clumps against his forehead makes him look sick. Fuck, maybe he is. Maybe he’s experiencing hospitalization-levels of exhaustion like celebrities you read about on gossip blogs. He definitely isn’t sleeping enough or eating like he should, and his stress level is through the goddamn roof. He can hear his mom’s voice in the back of his head, telling him that he’s running himself into the ground, and for once, he agrees with her. 

He doesn’t know how to stop, though. He doesn’t think he can because he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s even _doing_ anymore.

Ryan sticks his hands under the running water, rinsing them before he leans over and starts rubbing at the dried blood crusted under his nose. The water runs a pale pink for a brief moment before going clear again.

He takes the opportunity to splash the rest of his face, running his wet hands over his throat and the back of his neck, soaking the collar of his shirt in the process, but he doesn’t care. It feels amazing on his overheated skin. Leaning his elbows on the sides of the sink, Ryan sighs, letting water drip from the tip of his nose and his chin. He feels cooler, if not better than he did outside.

Trying to convince himself that he’s coming down with something feels like some pretty serious denial but the alternative is too much to consider. Too heavy, too confusing, too absolutely goddamn frightening to think about. He turns off the water and stands up again to look at himself in the mirror. He still looks like shit but at least he isn’t burning up anymore.

When Ryan reaches to shut off the tap, the pain in his head spikes suddenly, so hard and so fast that Ryan hisses and doubles over, almost bashing his head against the sink. A memory, or a vision, or _something_ sparks to life in his mind: his hands on the steering wheel of a car, snow flurries in the air, Shane laughing beside him, the stag.

Ryan wrenches himself away from the counter and stumbles toward the door. His heart is beating so hard, it feels like it’s about to tear its way through his ribs and spill out onto the floor. His head pulses again and he grabs it. The pain, the ringing in his ears, the feeling in his gut like something is after him, telling him to _run, run, run_ is too much. It feels like he’s back in his living room with that _thing_.

The familiar pull in his chest that he identifies as his bond with Shane, pulses hotly, but the pain in his head leaves him unable to think. Ryan lurches sideways, toward the sink again, and dry heaves so hard that he nearly chokes.

The door opens, squeaking on its hinges, and everything stops so suddenly that Ryan feels like he’s been thrust over the first hill of a roller coaster. It’s like walking into an air conditioned room after being outside in the blistering sun, or anticipating one too many steps on a flight of stairs. The change is so drastic that it leaves his arms shaking from how hard he grips the edges of the sink, trying to keep his knees from giving out.

He heaves again, making his stomach muscles ache.

An arm wraps around his waist and someone shushes him quietly. Shane’s hand reaches for the faucet and turns the water back on, bringing a palm-full of cool water up to his forehead. He slumps in Shane’s hold, his fingers so stiff, so tense, that he thinks his knuckles might crack.

He spits into the sink and pries a hand away from the porcelain to cup it under the water and takes a drink. 

“What the fuck is happening to me?” Ryan rasps, his throat sore and his voice tight. “Was it here?”

“No.”

“Then what the fuck was that?” 

“Just—its influence. It’s in your head, Ry. Whatever you’re seeing isn’t real.”

Ryan’s head drops. He grips the arm around him with both shaking hands, because Shane is solid and _real_. “This thing is gonna kill me.”

“No, it won’t,” Shane says, turning off the tap again. “I’ve got you.” He sounds so fierce, so sure of himself; it should be comforting to Ryan. It should be. 

But for the first time, since Ryan found out what Shane is, he doesn’t think he believes him.

 

\--

 

Shane wants to call off the investigation. He doesn’t think it’s a good idea for them to go out, practically looking for trouble, when Ryan is being actively sought and attacked by some other demonic entity. And Ryan agrees with every single point that he makes, except for the fact that he wants to get the fuck out of LA for a little while; even if it’s just the weekend. 

Maybe the thing that’s looking for him, biding its time to do whatever it’s planning on doing, won’t be able to find him right away, or even know where he’s going. He wants a distraction, he wants to not be so completely on edge, the way he is right now. He can’t function like this, anymore; he is worn the fuck out.

So they go.

The flight is in the early evening and they don’t arrive in Seattle until close to midnight. Ryan is exhausted and Shane is doing a good job of pretending like he is too; haunted is the word he’d use in any other situation, for any other person. Mark trudges along behind them, holding his handheld camera, getting filler footage to pad the episode runtime if the investigation turns out to be a dud.

Ryan wants to take Shane’s hand as they wait at the curb for their Lyft to arrive, but he hasn’t had the talk about what he’s comfortable showing their viewers with himself—or Shane, for that matter—yet. He makes eye contact with Mark for a moment before he turns away again. Shane tucks his phone into his back pocket and hooks his fingers through Ryan’s. 

He doesn’t know if it’s their bond or if Shane is just that attuned to him, but he isn’t going to complain. Ryan tucks his chin inside the neck of his hoodie and clamps his teeth around the zipper, squeezing Shane’s hand back. He doesn’t miss the fact that Mark has the camera focused on the cars in the pick-up lane and not the two of them. Ryan leans against Shane a little, already feeling a tiny rush of relief at being so far away from home. 

It’s probably not entirely warranted, considering Shane doesn’t seem to know if anything is capable of tracking them here. 

“My perception is skewed,” he’d said, sitting on the bed, watching Ryan pack up his carry-on. “I could feel you anywhere.”

“Could you feel me before you tagged my soul?” Ryan had asked.

“Yes.”

“So in theory, so can every other demon.”

“It’s different.”

“How is it different?”

“I _know_ you. And I was in love with you before I marked you.”

Ryan had bitten back a smile at that, holding his bottom lip between his teeth until it ached. “And that makes a difference?”

“I keep telling you, Ry. Intention is everything with us.”

So maybe he’s not any safer here, in Washington state, than he is back home in California, but he’s going to pretend that he is. If intention is everything, maybe belief, and expectation, and determination are too. Maybe that’s what he has to put out into the universe, or whatever that manifesting bullshit is.

He’s too tired to think properly and his entire body is sore. Still, he falls asleep in record time, once he’s sprawled out in bed, halfway on top of Shane. Just touching him eases every single ache in his joints and his stomach, and soothes the constant, low throbbing in his head. Shane runs his hands up and down Ryan’s back until he passes out, and probably even after because he doesn’t wake up again until the alarm on Shane’s phone goes off, the next afternoon.

 

\--

 

The house they’re investigating isn’t one that turns up on many casual google searches for haunted locations. Ryan knows, because he spent a long time searching for a place like this. Something new, practically off the grid, never before investigated by any other paranormal group, barely a mention of it on ghost hunting forums. 

They’re the first in as actual paranormal investigators, and any hesitation that Ryan had been feeling about the night evaporates once they set foot on the property. 

It’s dark, it’s old, and it’s creepy, and it’s probably the perfect place to catch a ghost on camera. It’s misting rain as he and Shane strap into their GoPros in the headlights of the rental car. Mark films them while the rest of the team gets the sound equipment set up. The familiar nerves are creeping in, but at this point, after doing so many of these, it feels more like excitement to him than anything else. He’s not afraid. Not with Shane here. 

Everything else fades away, leeching out of him like water into a dishcloth. He bounces on his heels a little, checking the battery in his flashlight and then the spirit box, even though he’d replaced both of them back at the hotel.

As soon as they get the thumbs up from the team, Ryan and Shane head inside.

The house is an old one, built in the late 1800s by a logging family. There are five recorded deaths on the property, including three children. The reports range everywhere from a baby’s cry, to the smell of cigar smoke in the front room, footsteps overhead on the creaking wooden floor, and a classic woman in white roaming around the property. There’re even reports of a ghost cat prowling up and down the staircase but Ryan keeps that one to himself, for now. 

They do a walkthrough of the first floor for sound testing and then the crew makes themselves scarce, leaving just Ryan and Shane alone with Mark and TJ for the intro. 

The house around them is quiet, save for the almost rhythmic creaks and groans the wind causes as it blows against the siding in harsh gusts. Just hearing it makes him shudder; even though it’s not exactly cold here, it isn’t comfortable either. Ryan fidgets with his sleeves, pulling the cuffs down until they’re drawn up to his knuckles. He needs something with thumb holes, he thinks. Or to steal something of Shane’s.

“Earth to Boogara,” TJ says, as Mark holds his camera aside.

Ryan looks up at him with a jerk. “What?”

Shane has his own handheld camera pointed at the floor. “You gonna lead us in?”

Right. History of the house. Ryan clears his throat. “Sorry. Lost in thought.”

The look that Shane gives him isn’t one of profound confidence. His eyebrows are drawn together and he takes a deep breath through his nose, like he wants to say something, but the thought is never vocalized.

Ryan nods at Mark, who trains his camera on him for a moment before he gives a thumbs-up and Ryan starts talking. 

They go through the house, doing the normal routine. Ryan gives a B-grade history lesson and Shane makes wise cracks at every single turn. Even though Ryan is feeling more and more immersed in their surroundings, everything Shane says and does gives the impression of being forced, like he’s performing, filling the role of Shane Madej on BFU. 

Ryan tries to ignore it, moving from room to room, listening to Shane’s jokes fall flat. Normally pretty much everything Shane says makes him laugh, especially when he’s a little nervous and on edge in a haunted location. But after a while it starts to border on annoying. 

Ryan is trying to lose himself in the hunt and he can’t do it when Shane is beside him, acting like a try-hard caricature of himself.

He aims his flashlight at TJ. “I think we’re ready to do solo stuff.” 

TJ nods, easy as ever and says, “We’ll be outside.”

Ryan watches them go, listening for the front door to open and shut before he looks at Shane. They’re standing in the middle of the house’s study, surrounded by books and the musty smell of old paper and mildew. The house is no longer lived in but the owners are clearly still doing upkeep while holding it as close as possible to its original style. 

Shane’s face is heavily shadowed in the dark, and a small, hard to snuff out part of Ryan whispers how foolish he is to be in here alone with a demon. He pushes Shane’s camera hand down, listening for the beep that indicates that its been shut off.

“What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing,” Shane says, meeting his gaze.

“Bullshit. You’re stiffer than a fucking board. This episode is going to blow, if you don’t snap out of it.”

Shane shakes his head, looking out toward the hallway, dark and quiet beyond the open French doors. Ryan swallows and looks back at him. “Is something here?”

“I don’t feel anything.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“I always feel _something_. Even if there’s nothing paranormal, I can still feel the impression of death; it always leaves a mark. But there isn’t anything here.” He shakes his head again. “It’s not right.”

“Maybe the house is on a ley line,” Ryan suggests quietly. “Would that throw you off?”

Shane’s eyes melt to black as Ryan watches, and he looks around the room again, tilting his head up to glance at the ceiling. He searches the upper floors, presumably the way he always has, whenever Ryan wasn’t looking. It’s surreal and a little bit unsettling, but Ryan only feels a deep sort of gratitude for Shane’s ability to scope a location out for its particular brand of bump in the night.

The whites of his eyes return when he looks at Ryan again. “I don’t know. I don’t think so; I’d feel that too.”

The familiar unease of the last week is starting to creep back in, grabbing hold of his ankles and crawling up his legs. He rubs his face with his free hand.

“If there’s nothing here, then let’s just get this over with.”

Shane watches him for a moment before nodding. The camera beeps as he thumbs it on again and raises it to sweep the room; the light jumps over the bindings of books and the backs of chairs, throwing strange, twisting shadows against the wall. Ryan watches him for a moment, his brown eyes looking black, again, in the darkness. He looks intense in a way that Shane rarely ever presents himself to people outside of Ryan. He doesn’t look like himself.

Ryan heaves a sigh and turns to leave the room, swinging his flashlight beam out to illuminate the hallway. 

“Let’s try upstairs.”

“Right behind ya.”

The stairs creak under his feet, the noise muffled through the carpeting covering them. He counts them as he goes, watching dust motes float through the beam of light as he moves it from side to side. At the landing, he pauses, hearing the floorboards squeak near the bottom of the stairs.

“Ryan, hold on a sec,” Shane calls from somewhere behind him. 

Ryan has every intention of waiting for him, but as he turns, he catches movement out of the corner of his eye. His heart jumps immediately into overdrive, adrenaline pounding through his veins, making his hands shake as he aims his flashlight in that direction. There’s nothing there, when he looks, but he knows what he saw. He knows it. 

Ryan moves before he can even think about it. It’s like he’s being drawn toward it, like he has no choice but to _see for himself_. He licks his upper lip and tastes blood. 

The room is mostly empty, used for storage, with pieces of furniture leaning up against the walls, and plastic tubs in the far corner. Ryan swings his flashlight toward the open closet, but there’s nothing there. 

Nothing.

Ryan feels overwhelmingly dizzy for a moment and then he feels nothing at all.

Shane finally reaches the second floor landing, calling out to him again, his voice significantly more urgent. Ryan tries to turn toward the doorway again but suddenly, he can’t move. 

He can’t _move_. 

The adrenaline turns to panic and his body runs cold. His extremities feel like they’re weighted down to the floor by cinder blocks. He feels a powerful shove between his shoulder blades and goes crashing to his knees, crying out as he hits the floor. 

In the next instant his body goes hot, all over, and his ears begin to ring as he’s forced forward onto his forearms; it feels like an invisible weight is pressing down on him, trying to crush him. Blood runs from his nose and something wet begins to trickle out his ears. He wants to cover them because the sound is _deafening_ , but he can’t lift himself enough to do so. And somehow he knows that if he moves his arms, he’ll be crushed against the old, hardwood beneath him.

There’s a pull in his chest, a tug backward at the line that ties him to Shane. He wants to beg for help. He wants to call out to him. He wants to scream as the weight on his neck forces him down until his forehead is grinding against the rough floorboards. He presses the palms of his hands as hard as he can against his ears, trying desperately to block out the sound, but it doesn’t help.

His head is going to fucking explode.

He can’t think, he can barely breathe, sucking in painful, gasping inhales that scrape at his throat and burn his lungs. He smells salt, tastes in on the back of his tongue. His arm throbs like it’s broken again. Ryan cries out but the sound is quiet and cracks halfway through, leaving him groaning through the pain of it.

The demon draws closer and Ryan only knows it because its presence burns white hot, like he’s roasting over an open flame. He can feel himself cracking apart, the thin skin of his knuckles splitting open. He’s going to fucking die and Shane isn’t helping him. 

_Why_ isn’t Shane helping him?

It goes on and on for what feels like hours but is probably only a handful of minutes, until suddenly he feels that heat inside of him, growing and burning, unfurling within him. He feels something twisting in his chest, like when Shane tried to reach into him to share his sight; it feels invasive and nauseating, like he’s going to vomit it right back up.

The knowledge hits him suddenly that he is no longer alone inside of his body. 

And that’s when everything stops. 

Ryan can hear Shane yelling for him and it’s all he can do to turn his head, resting his cheek on the dirty floor. His eyes won’t focus on Shane, standing in the doorway with his hands on either side of the doorframe, shouting frantically to him. He closes his eyes because it hurts less than keeping them open. 

Something pulses in his chest and he nearly chokes on his inhale. Ryan struggles to push himself up to his hands and knees again.

Why won’t Shane just _help him?_

A voice in his head breathes the word, _Salt_. And Ryan understands immediately that he has been lured directly into a trap and that Shane is incapable of following him. There is no help coming.

He is trapped and alone with no fucking idea how to get out.

 _Not alone_ , the voice reminds him.

 _Not alone_.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blood and (body) horror ahead. If you want to skip to the next scene, control f "When Ryan opens his eyes again, he doesn’t immediately know where he is." (Angst with a happy ending, though!)

Ryan has done a lot of things in his life that have scared him half to death. Every October, he goes to haunted houses and out to Knott’s Berry Farm when it turns into Knott’s Scary Farm, his livelihood revolves around investigating haunted houses, he played _Resident Evil VII_ in VR, for fuck’s sake, and he’s seen _The Exorcist_ so many times, he could quote it verbatim in his sleep. But nothing, no amount of research on exorcisms or movies about possession could prepare him for what it feels like to know that he is no longer alone inside his own body, against his will.

He wants to move, wants to call out to Shane to fucking _help him_ , but he can’t. His arms are limp against the floor, the right one throbbing steadily, and his head feels like it weighs a metric ton. He can’t move his legs or roll over onto his side; he can’t even open his mouth or make his eyes focus. All he can do is lie there, absolutely burning up inside, as he’s locked away from himself.

The presence inside of him is strong and cloying, like taking a deep breath on a humid, summer afternoon, shoving him back and down into the dark where he can’t see anything. Where he has no control over his own body.

It’s nothing like Shane feels. Nothing like the hook inside his chest that ties him to Shane, not possessive and protective. Shane’s presence inside of him is careful, radiating heat that doesn’t burn, and comforting beyond measure. 

This, though… this is painful and invasive, like a sliver under the fingernail, but magnified by a million. Ryan can feel blood pooling in his ear and running from his nose to drip onto the floor from his cheek. Everything aches, every joint stiff and the broken jut of bone visible under the skin of his right arm. He feels sick at the weighty presence inside of him. It’s sour and it smells like sulfur and rotting meat, and Ryan wants to heave until his stomach is empty, but nothing in his body is listening to him.

He hasn’t needed the reassurance from Shane, that he isn’t a monster, in a long time. This is the confirmation that Ryan has never asked him for.

The bond between them is stretched, taught and ready to snap. Ryan clings to it with everything he has, because he will drown without it. He knows it, can feel it, that the end of him is waiting when that thread breaks. 

There’s an image in his head, of Iowa, of the icy road and that fucking stag, and Shane breaking out the windshield of a car with his head. Ryan tries to turn away from it, but it’s impossible. He sees it over and over again until he feels nauseous. The thing inside of him is familiar and foreign all at once. He sees dark eyes and headlights. He feels the phantom touch of frigid cold wind on his exposed skin, even as he burns up inside.

 _Stop!_ he thinks, over and over until everything cuts off and Ryan’s body rolls onto its back.

He has no idea if he’s done this himself, or if the thing inside of him has; if it’s just learning the controls and taking him out for a test drive. Blood trickles out of his ear and down his neck before seeping into the hardwood floor. His forehead pounds, like it’s splitting open, peeling and cracking, on both sides.

Ryan chokes on his next breath, positive that he can feel something moving under his skin, pushing up and out of his head.

 _Horns_ , he thinks, a bit hysterically. And then, _antlers_.

The fucking _stag_.

He doesn’t know why Shane isn’t coming.

_Jesus christ, Shane, help me._

Ryan watches as his hands rise, tremoring in front of him, aching and burning, fingers spread against the dark backdrop of the painted ceiling. He doesn’t know if he should resist or encourage the movement as they draw closer to his face. He can’t make his eyes focus; everything is blurry and he doesn’t know if it’s tears or something worse. 

Dry fingertips touch his nose and he inhales hard enough to choke. He coughs and gags, gasping for breath, like his lungs don’t know how to inflate properly anymore. Breath after breath comes, burning his nasal passages and the back of his throat. 

Salt. 

So much of it, like he’s dug his hands into piles of rock salt and brought clenched fistfuls of it to his nose. He can’t make it stop. He inhales again, tasting blood, and then coughing it out in a grotesque spray onto his hands.

He did it. He lined the room with salt. But he doesn’t remember a moment of it. 

How long had he been apart from Shane between the study on the first floor and this second floor bedroom? How much time has he lost? And what other detrimental things might he have done without realizing it?

He chokes on his next inhale, struggling to breathe, his hands shaking and his arms straining as he tries and finally, _finally_ manages to force them down to his sides. They smack down hard against the floor, making his palms ache and his broken arm throb. 

There’s a feeling in his head, an impression, like confusion that doesn’t belong to him. Ryan digs his metaphorical heels in and puts everything he has into turning his head. He looks toward the doorway to see Shane slumped on his knees, watching him. Ryan’s vision is blurry, like his eyes are incapable of focusing, but he can see Shane perk up at the movement. He isn’t sure, but Shane’s eyes look black and his mouth is moving, like he’s shouting something that Ryan can’t hear, slamming his hands against the floor. 

There is still nothing, only a muted ringing in his ears, even when he strains to listen. He sucks in his first breath in too long, like he’s forgotten how to breathe on his own, or the thing inside of him doesn’t know to let him. Or maybe it wants Ryan to suffocate like this; fuck if he knows.

He watches Shane, trapped on the other side of the doorway, unable to reach him because of the barrier Ryan has drawn between them. 

He doesn’t know how the demon plans to get out of this room, now that it’s had Ryan blockade them inside of it. Maybe it doesn’t plan to let him leave at all.

He blinks, wetness spiking his eyelashes together, trying to focus on Shane again. The air behind him is distorted, darker somehow, like heat radiating outward from body. 

The hollow feeling in his chest scrapes away at the backs of his ribs, leaving him aching as the line tethering him to Shane pulls impossibly tighter. Ryan clings harder. He doesn’t know how to fight this, how to push it off or out, how to take himself back. He needs _help_.

 _Shane,_ he thinks desperately, a fresh wave of tears rolling down his temple and into the sweaty hair above his ear, _tell me what to do._

There is nothing to indicate that Shane has heard him, no movements or sounds or anything besides their wounded, pulsating bond. Ryan has never felt anything like the loneliness he feels now, drowning him, grasping at him, urging him to let go, give up.

Not a chance in hell.

There is surprise and alarm as Ryan forces himself over onto his side, almost faceplants into the floor. The backs of his knuckles are raw, flayed open and throbbing as he drags his hands over and tries to lever himself to his knees.

The crushing force that had brought him down earlier returns, pushing between his shoulders, making his back crack alarmingly and Ryan cry out. His arms shake and his teeth are grinding together hard enough that he’s afraid that they’re going to break. But having perfectly straight teeth isn’t going to do him a damn bit of good if he’s fucking dead, so he shoves that thought aside and struggles to push himself up onto his good arm. His bicep feels like it’s going to split open from how hard he’s straining his muscles, forcing himself to move.

He crawls, dragging and pulling himself toward the doorway. Shane’s voice starts to break through the muted haze in his ears. Ryan can’t make out the words but they serve as a guide to lead him as he struggles blindly toward the door. He can’t lift his head, can’t see more than the wood grain under his fingers, the bloody tips of them and the trail they leave as he inches closer and closer to Shane.

The thing inside of him rallies against Ryan’s sudden show of strength, crushing the air from his lungs. Ryan collapses, gasping for breath and unable to draw one. His body convulses, both of his arms spasm and land outstretched on the floor in front of him. Shane’s tone is pleading, his words still unintelligible; he doesn’t know if he’s speaking to Ryan or the thing inside of him. He doesn’t know what Shane would offer in exchange for his release, but he’s terrified of what Shane might be reduced to.

Seconds tick by and Ryan panics, fingers grasping at nothing and his chest burning from the lack of oxygen. His head and his heart are both pulsing with, pain lancing from temple to temple, and his chest seized up tight. 

He’s going to die. 

Inches away from Shane and the thick line of salt at his fingertips. He can’t break it, can’t quite reach. His lungs are going to collapse and he is going to fucking die.

With one final surge of desperation, Ryan forces himself onto his side, his fingers moving along the floor until they slide into a mound of rock salt. He pulls as much of it as he can into his fist and then drags his hand back. It doesn’t break the line and the thing inside of him is smug, taunting and laughing, scratching at his fucking brain. 

Ryan’s vision tunnels rapidly, eyelids fluttering as he fights to keep them open. The familiar pull that he recognizes as _Shane_ in his chest pulses, wild and panicky, and Ryan draws his violently shaking hand close enough that he can clamp his fingers over his mouth, shoving his fistful of salt into it.

There have been few moments in Ryan’s life where it felt like time has stopped. Coming home from school to find out that his dog had died. The time in high school when his mom had moved out for a week. Losing his grandparents. Seeing the stag in the road. The realization that Shane was kissing him for the first time. Finding out what Shane really is. 

And now, this.

The salt crystals are coarse and large, scraping his esophagus as he swallows, choking on them as the demon tries to force them back out. Ryan digs his fingernails into his cheek so hard that he can feel his own skin pulling up under them. 

He takes one deep inhale through his nose. And then everything starts moving again.

It burns like someone has set him on fire from the inside. He clamps his eyes shut as he gags, trying to keep the salt down, trying to force this thing inside of him _out_. Ryan regains control of himself in random order. His other hand comes free, as if suddenly pulled from under a heavy weight, then his leg, allowing him to roll onto his elbows and knees before he vomits.

It’s disgusting and it hurts, like nothing else ever has. His stomach contracts in sharp, painful heaves, and he spews out a thick, sour, black liquid that clings to his teeth and the inside of his mouth; and it just keeps _coming_.

He wavers, rocking unsteadily on the leg that still feels like dead weight, his muscles fatigued and strained. Something is screaming inside of him and it feels like it’s coming from all over, from everywhere at once, making his head ache uncontrollably. There’s a fresh, wet trickle of blood from his nose, and the coppery smell of it makes him gag even harder. His lungs are still burning from being crushed, and he can’t _breathe_.

“ _Ryan!_ ” 

His hearing returns, like something snapping into place, leaving his ears ringing and making him wince, wanting to dig his fingers into them until he can’t hear again. The thick, hot liquid splattered over his hands and pooling around them smells disgusting and Ryan gags again, closing his watering eyes against it. 

“Ryan,” Shane pleads, “break the line. Break the fucking line! Fucking—Ryan, _please_.”

There’s no possible way to hold himself up on one arm anymore, and he collapses onto his sore, aching chest. He reaches out, arm stretched and tremoring violently, and manages to just barely draw the tip of his middle finger through the salt. 

Shane explodes over the broken line, into the room, in a burst of heat and fury, as Ryan’s vision blackens at the edges. Everything is blurry and hot; Ryan is still tasting blood and something far more sickeningly sour. 

There is a moving, black mass, thrashing wildly around the room, pulsing and sparking like lightning inside a cloud, like it’s about to burst into flame. He can hear shrieking, high-pitched and inhuman, making his skin crawl. 

The cracking of glass and splintering of wood can be heard as the mass splits into two and comes together again, pulsing heat that makes Ryan want to throw up. That shriek, magnified immeasurably, echoes in his ears, in his head. It’s so loud that it hurts.

Part of that is Shane, in there; he knows it because he can feel it, not because he can distinguish one dark blur from another. Shane’s physical body is lying just out of reach in the hallway, where he left it behind, and Ryan doesn’t even try to look at it. He doesn’t want to see it.

He can’t make his damn eyes _focus_ , anyway. Fuck, he doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s clinging to consciousness by a thread, hoping—fucking praying—that neither of them are about to die. 

There’s a wild pulsing heat and a sound like thunder and nails on a chalkboard that echoes in his head, reverberates in his chest, thrumming along the invisible thread that ties him to Shane. And then there is silence, all at once, so overwhelming and final, and Ryan thinks that must be the end of it. That he’s safe. That Shane is safe.

The soreness in his lungs eases as that black mass touches him, ghosts over his arm like static, or the pins and needles sensation that accompanies a sleeping limb. Dazed, he lifts his fingers to touch, but it moves on, floating back toward Shane’s body.

Ryan closes his eyes as the pounding in his head drowns out everything else around him. But the knowledge that he is alone in his body settles over him. Everything else starts to rapidly fade away.

And everything is finally, blessedly quiet.

 

\--

 

When Ryan opens his eyes again, he doesn’t immediately know where he is. He’s disoriented and his vision is blurred; trying to focus on anything is absolutely nauseating. All he knows is that he’s in a moving car and the seatbelt is putting terrible pressure on his aching stomach muscles. Ryan groans, closing his eyes as they pass under a streetlight, reaching up to touch his throbbing head. 

He feels like he should be afraid, or panicking, but he’s not. He’s too fucking exhausted to feel anything but the pain coursing through every square inch of his body. Long, warm fingers wrap around his forearm and the pressure in his head lessens immediately, leaching out of him, toward Shane’s overly-warm hand. As the sharp ache lets up, though, it only seems to highlight every other pain in his body; his lungs still burn with every inhale, his right arm pulses hotly, and his belly is so sore it feels like he’s been gutted. Everything fucking hurts, far beyond Shane’s ability to heal.

“Oh, fuck,” he breathes, eyes pinched shut, even though the car is dark. “Shane.”

“I’m here,” he says, reassuringly, firmly, though his voice is tight, his thumb stroking over Ryan’s skin.

“I think I’m gonna puke.”

Shane obediently pulls the car onto the shoulder of the road. Ryan listens to the crunch of gravel under the tires as they slow to a stop, then the warning ding as Shane takes off his seatbelt, and the repeated, soft click of the hazard lights. Shane turns off the overhead cab light before he gets out of the car, and Ryan is alone for a few, horrible seconds. Then his door opens and those careful, healing hands are on him again. Ryan’s throat feels like someone just dragged it down a mile of dirt road or he would moan with relief.

His knees buckle when he tries to climb out of the car, his feet skidding over wet grass and rock. Ryan grips Shane’s forearms and lets himself be lowered to the ground. His eyes still narrowed to the point where he might as well just keep them shut.

The cool misting rain feels good on his heated face, and Ryan tips his head back, feeling the bite of gravel at his knees as he shifts to sit on his heels. Shane’s hands still grip his forearms, making sure he doesn’t lose his balance, which Ryan is endlessly grateful for. He takes slow, careful breaths that burn his lungs so goddamn badly, but still feel so, so good, because nothing is trying to stop him from doing it.

He realizes that he has barely any idea as to what transpired after he choked himself on rock salt; his brain is still offline, not yet ready to process tonight, and that’s absolutely fine with him, for now. Cracking open his burning eyes, he looks at Shane, confirming that it’s really him, on his knees on the side of some random road in Seattle, looking at him like he’s afraid that Ryan is going to keel over dead or just straight up disappear right before his eyes.

Ryan tips his head to the side and spits into the grass. It’s thick and tastes mostly like blood, but he imagines the consistency of anything coming out of him right now would be at least sixty-five percent blood, if not more. Ryan spits again and then turns back to Shane; his eyebrows are pulled together, creating a little furrow between them that makes him look older than he is. Or his human body is. Thinking about the specifics of it makes Ryan’s head hurt so badly that he nearly topples over, but Shane makes sure that he stays upright.

“Did I grow antlers?”

“Not physically.”

“ _What?_ ” Ryan starts to shake his head but the motion makes his vision swim and a fresh wave of nausea rise up in the back of his throat. “Did I die?”

“What? No.”

“Then stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Shane laughs like he does when he’s genuinely surprised, or when he does it at inappropriate times, soft and quiet and a little high-pitched. It only lasts a moment before he’s shaking Ryan a bit, like he’s trying to rattle the sense back into him.

Ryan groans. “Oh, dude, don’t shake me. I seriously might hurl.”

“Then stop being an ass.”

There’s a faint cracking sound, like dried out wood snapping in a fire. Ryan looks down at where his hands are wrapped around Shane’s forearms for balance. Even in the dark, Ryan can see that the skin there is inflamed around his fingers, burning nearly black under his palms. 

Ryan snatches his hands back, immediately, turning his palms up to look at them where they shake in the space between him and Shane.

“What the fuck?” he whispers.

“It’s just the salt.”

“Fuck,” Ryan hisses, dropping his hands and rubbing them against his thighs until the friction is almost unbearable. 

Shane grabs his wrists, halting the motion, and Ryan looks at him, his eyes burning. 

“I don’t remember doing it.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not fucking okay, Shane! How did it even make me—if it was _in me_ then how—“

Shane’s hand touches his face and Ryan cuts himself off, clenching his teeth so hard that his jaw starts to ache. His eyes slip shut as Shane’s hand moves down to his neck, squeezing the curve of it, fingertips pressing into his shoulder. He can’t tell if Shane is using his abilities to calm him or seeping the tension out, or if Ryan is just so trusting of him that he can relax so quickly. He lifts his hand to wrap around Shane’s wrist; there’s a faint hissing like water on a hot stove, but Shane doesn’t pull back. 

“Influence is enough to make you do things you don’t remember.” He rubs his thumb against the thin skin of Ryan’s throat. “Even before possession; it’s been familiarizing itself with you for months. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know it wasn’t,” Ryan says, opening his eyes again, blinking against the hazy aura that won’t seem to go away.

His head is _pounding_. Shane holds him steady and Ryan tries to breathe through his mouth; ignoring the gut-churning smell of singed skin.

Ryan looks at Shane in the dark for a long moment. “Where is everyone?” 

“I’ll deal with them.” Ryan shakes his head but Shane continues before he can protest that weak-ass answer. “I’ll make them forget it happened. Don’t worry about it. Worry about yourself, right now. We have to get you to a hospital.”

“And tell them what?”

“That you’ve been mugged or in a fight or attacked by a poltergeist. It doesn’t fucking matter, Ry, we need to get moving. You almost _died_ and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

Ryan closes his eyes again. The rain feels so good but he is so cold everywhere that Shane isn’t touching him. It’s the polar opposite of how he’s felt for the past week.

“I didn’t die.”

He listens to Shane take a deep, shaky breath but he doesn’t offer a response. And when Ryan opens his eyes again, Shane looks absolutely gutted. 

Ryan lifts his hands, still covered in dried, flaking blood, and noticeably shaking, to take hold of Shane’s neck. He draws Shane in until their foreheads are pressed together, and closes his eyes. There is blissful relief at the point of contact and Ryan lets out a quavering breath; Shane shivers a bit.

In the silence between them, Ryan hears nothing but the two of them breathing and the distant sounds of tires over wet pavement. Even the sizzling of his hands on Shane’s skin has ceased. Everything fucking hurts, but he’s okay and so is Shane, and that’s all he thinks matters, right now. He reaches out blindly and fists both hands in Shane’s ugly flannel shirt, and holds on with everything he’s got.

“Shane,” he says at length.

“Yeah, Ry?”

“We are never doing anything but True Crime ever again.”

Shane’s laugh is surprised and has just the slightest edge of desperation to it. Ryan sets his teeth against his lip; it throbs painfully but he just bites down harder.

 

\--

 

Ryan spends two days in a Seattle hospital before he’s given clearance to go home. He stays tightlipped on every single question directed toward him, letting Shane manipulate the situation through whatever means he finds necessary. Ryan looks the other way and ignores his surroundings, holding onto his plausible deniability as tightly as he can. He doesn’t have the energy to do anything else.

He doesn’t know how they’d explain this otherwise, and that—along with the narcotics the nurses provide—allows him to sleep through almost everything, anyway.

The official story is that Ryan was in another car accident, and that’s about all that Shane tells anyone who asks. Whatever manipulations he uses, it’s not audible or outwardly visible. Ryan can’t tell what he’s doing or how he’s doing it. He doesn’t actually care, so long as they’re safe. 

Shane seems exhausted and unusually pale, by the time Ryan’s discharged. Realistically, Ryan knows that Shane’s otherworldly power has to have some kind of a limit, but he’s never thought about it before now. He’s always envisioned Shane’s power as some unending well that he can draw from, but it’s clear, now, that that isn’t the case. Shane has drained himself, altering the memories of pretty much everyone that Ryan has had contact with over the past several days, including their crew. On top of it, he’s been healing Ryan, in the brief moments that they’re alone, taking bits and pieces of his pain from him.

Ryan tries to not feel a little bad about that part but he can’t help it. 

His arm has been reset but Shane has already healed it, while he slept, and Ryan shrugs out of the sling he’d been given the moment they’re off hospital property. It still hurts, like an old bruise, but every single bit of him aches in some capacity; he’s at least used to being careful with his arm. He’s more than a little worse for wear but he’s still doing all right, all things considered.

Shane, though. Shane is another story.

From the sickly pallor of his skin and his tired eyes, Ryan can tell that he’s exhausted. But he’s also cold. When he touches Shane, there isn’t the familiar pulse of heat that comes with it, and it’s scaring the shit out of Ryan; more than Shane’s silence or his unnaturally lethargic demeanor. 

He fears what might be happening to Shane but he’s too afraid to ask. 

Ryan feels like he’s barely functioning. There’s too much to process—his brain feels like it’s on total overload—and he can’t do it, right now. He just can’t. 

Ryan feels at a loss, but he can barely keep his eyes open, let alone figure out what Shane needs from him. He’s too tired to help either of them.

He sleeps the entire flight home to LA, with his leg pressed against Shane’s and an unfamiliar ache behind his ribs. At first, he thinks it’s a phantom sensation leftover from that thing being inside of him. But by the time Shane is bundling him into a Lyft outside the airport, he recognizes it as their bond. Cold and strung out, like elastic stretched beyond its capability, unable to regain its original shape again.

And that scares Ryan, more than anything else he has experienced in the past week. 

 

\--

 

Ryan has known Shane for a long time. He’s been friends with the human he presents himself as for years, and been in love with the actual demon inside the body for months. They’ve worked together and collaborated artistically with each other, investigated haunted locations all across North America together, and Ryan has survived two near-death experiences with him. Shane has saved his life.

No one knows him better than Shane. And Ryan knows Shane better than anyone else probably ever has, in his entire, long existence.

So he knows that when the Lyft stops outside of his apartment complex, that Shane is not planning on going inside with him. Ryan can tell by the way that Shane’s avoiding eye contact with him that he’s going to sit right there, with his legs bent up behind the front passenger seat, and watch Ryan go in alone. He knows without asking that Shane is going to fall back to his default behavior and give Ryan space that he doesn’t need and definitely doesn’t want.

The very idea of going inside his apartment alone, after what happened to him the last time, and the events of the past weekend, scares the shit out of him. 

He’s still unclear on what exactly Shane can pick up from the thread tying the two of them together. But he must be able to sense Ryan’s fear, one way or another, because he unbuckles his seatbelt and climbs out of the car without either of them saying a word.

Shane stands on the pavement, while Ryan waits on the curb, bringing them almost eye-level with each other. He hands off Ryan’s carry-on, and places his hand on the trunk but doesn’t close it yet.

“It’s gone, Ry,” he says quietly. “It can’t—“

“Come inside.”

“Ryan—“

“No. No bullshit,” Ryan says, cutting him off again. “Just… come the fuck inside. Don’t you dare leave me alone.”

Shane does as he’s told, reaching back into the trunk to grab his own suitcase; he sets it aside on the curb and then leans in the front passenger-side window to speak to the driver. 

It’s so hot out, unbelievably humid for this time of year, but Ryan still revels in the feel of it. He’s been cold, ever since Seattle. He can’t remember what it was like in the car, if he was overheating or freezing cold, or if it was just Shane that felt different. Felt wrong. But he’s cold now, and he can’t seem to get warm.

He rubs absently at the spot that Shane carved out inside his chest as the car pulls away. Shane’s eyes move from his hand to his face, and he holds out his arm, gesturing toward the building.

“After you,” he says at length.

 

\--

 

Kicking off his shoes and collapsing on his couch feels like his own little slice of heaven. He slouches down with a groan, running his hand back through his hair, knocking his baseball hat off in the process. He avoids looking directly at the spot where the other demon had been.

Shane follows him slowly, coming around the coffee table to sit on his other side. Ryan sets his elbow on the armrest and props his cheek against his palm. It makes his jaw hurt but everything fucking hurts, right now, so he just tries to ignore it.

It feels like the first moment they’ve had alone in days and Ryan is almost too exhausted to talk.

“Did you kill it?” he asks bluntly.

Shane looks at him and huffs a laugh, reaching up to ruffle his own hair; it looks soft without any product in it. And he looks as tired as Ryan feels. 

“I destroyed its core; there's nothing for it to rebuild,” he confirms.

Ryan nods, looking down at where his other hand rests on his own thigh, his knuckles still scabbed over and aching. 

“I’m sorry,” Shane says, drawing Ryan’s gaze.

“For what?”

“All of it.” He clears his throat. “It never should have gotten as far as it did. I should have… just dealt with it as soon as it attacked you. But I thought I could keep you safe.” Shane runs both hands over his dirty hair, pushing it back off his forehead and setting it on end, sticking out every which way. “It’s been with us—with you—for months.”

“And you never sensed it? Never thought something could be wrong?”

“I thought it was me. Causing the nightmares and the nosebleeds,” Shane says, an echo of himself from less than a week ago. It feels longer than that; like months or years, since they sat on his kitchen floor, cobbling things together after the demon’s first appearance in his apartment. “The accident… _Fuck_ , I’m just—I’m sorry, Ryan. I was too close to you to see it.”

“It caused the accident,” Ryan says. It doesn’t come out as a question.

“Yeah.”

“ _Why?_ What could it possibly—what was on the table to gain by almost killing me?”

Shane rubs a hand over his mouth and slowly down his chin; Ryan can hear the scrape of his stubble against his palm. He tries not to get distracted because this is so wildly important to him but he’s so _tired_ and his mind is threatening to wander.

“I don’t think it was trying to kill you,” Shane finally says, slowly. “I could feel it while I was—“ he cuts himself off and starts again. “Maybe it just meant to knock you out and take your body, or your soul, while I was incapacitated. Or maybe I was supposed to die, I don’t know.” Shane shakes his head minutely and his voice is quiet when he speaks again. “I almost lost you. Worse than I even realized.”

He looks so defeated, sitting there on Ryan’s couch, his gaze unfocused and his eyebrows drawn together, creasing his forehead. Ryan’s hands itch to reach out and touch him, bring him back to the moment.

“Shane—“

“Fucker.” He huffs something too weak to be a laugh, seemingly not having heard Ryan. “I got to you first, though.”

Ryan wants to be angry with him, wants to know how Shane could have missed what seem like such obvious clues now, looking back, for so _long_. He feels like he’s been flayed raw, and he’s still so shaken by the whole experience that he feels like he’s about to come right out of his skin. 

But he looks at Shane and he’s just… not. He’s not angry at Shane, he’s angry at the thing that tried to kill him. He didn’t think it would be so easy to separate the two, but it is. Mostly because he knows that Shane won’t ever make the same mistake twice. He won’t ever leave Ryan so vulnerable again. Faintly, he wonders just how much Shane has been downplaying his own strength, ever since the truth came out. His thoughts are too convoluted right now to really focus on it, though.

Ryan feels like the survivor protagonist in a horror movie, where he’s protected himself and come out bloodied and mentally scarred, but still alive. And not hoping for a sequel anytime soon. Or ever. 

“Okay,” Ryan says, drawing his leg up and turning to face Shane on the couch. “New rule. You don’t ever keep me in a situation like that again. If you can handle it, do it. Immediately. And you never withhold shit that could potentially get you or me killed.”

He watches Shane’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. “Okay,” he says hoarsely.

Ryan rubs his dry lips together, wetting them with his tongue, and nods. If Shane promises, it’s as good as a deal. “All right.” He reaches for Shane’s hand and draws it toward him, pressing the palm against his chest. “Now seriously, fucking warm me up. I’m freezing.”

Shane moves closer, leaning into Ryan’s space and kissing him, soft and gentle and just a little wet. He pulls Ryan closer, cradling his head carefully in his other hand, and Ryan kisses back, touching the stubble growing too long on Shane’s chin. Heat blooms under the press of Shane’s hand, inside his chest, growing slowly, and Ryan breaks the kiss with a groan of relief. 

Ducking his head, Shane nudges his face into the crook of Ryan’s neck, his fingertips pressing into the dips of Ryan’s ribs, around his sternum. Ryan threads his fingers in Shane’s hair and holds him there. He hadn’t realized how accustomed he’d become to being overly warm all the time until it felt like all of the heat inside of him had been sucked out. He relaxes back into the couch and lets Shane shift with him until they’re both curled up together in a way two grown men, as big as the two of them are, shouldn’t be able to manage. But somehow they do.

Ryan has no idea how long they stay like that before he speaks again. 

“Are you doing okay?”

Shane doesn’t move under the repeated stroking of Ryan’s hand through his hair. He’s never seen Shane this docile before. Then again, he’s never seen Shane genuinely tired before. Or hurt or strung out and weak from healing and altering the memories of so many people. He’s never seen Shane this raw and open, so completely trusting of Ryan.

Fuck, he’s a terrible demon.

Ryan buries his face in Shane’s hair and closes his eyes.

“I’m fine. It just takes time to regenerate my core. Especially when I don’t have an energy source.” He shifts his head so that he’s no longer speaking into Ryan’s neck. “I’ll be back to normal in a day or so.”

Ryan nods, his eyes pinched shut against the sudden, inexplicable dampness threatening. The breath that he lets out is shaky and he tugs Shane in closer than is comfortable for either of them, but Shane holds him just as tightly, in turn. 

It’s a long time before either of them moves.

 

\--

 

Technically, tomorrow is Friday. Technically, they both have work in the morning. Technically, Ryan can probably weasel out of it because of his supposed car accident. But Shane doesn’t have any sort of excuse to stay behind with him, and Ryan still doesn’t feel entirely comfortable with the idea of being alone in his apartment. 

So when Shane’s alarm goes off in the morning, he gets up too. Shane brushes his teeth and dresses out of his suitcase, still sitting in the entryway, and tugs a rust-colored beanie down over his messy hair. He’s still abnormally pale looking and sluggish. Ryan knows that he isn’t recovering quickly but he doesn’t know how to help, or if he even can.

He knows Shane isn’t feeling up to snuff, because he doesn’t protest Ryan going into the office today. 

Shane slumps down on the couch and watches Ryan sit on the edge of the coffee table and lace up his Nikes. He looks almost dazed, his eyes glassy and face expressionless. The worry in Ryan’s chest amps up another notch until it’s almost sickening.

“Are you gonna be okay?” he asks as he finishes up one shoe and starts on the other. He’s moving a little slow himself. His arm is still aching and he’s going to have to wear the brace all day to keep up appearances; he’s not looking forward to it.

“I’m good,” Shane says, looking up at him, voice still raspy with disuse.

Ryan sighs, lacing his fingers together and letting them hang between his knees. “Can I help?”

“I’m fine, Ry,” Shane says for what feels like the millionth time.

“You’re obviously not fine.”

“Thanks, babe.” Shane pats him on the thigh and then leans back into the couch cushions, closing his eyes, fingers coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose.

Ryan pivots himself around to sit facing him. They are definitely going to be late today but Ryan doesn’t have any fucks left to give about anything outside of this room, right now. He puts both hands on Shane’s knees and squeezes. Shane’s fingers curl around his but he doesn’t move, otherwise.

After a moment of silence, Ryan fishes his phone out of his front pocket and orders them a Lyft. 

“Car’ll be here in five.”

Shane sighs quietly to himself and nods, levering his lanky body up off the couch and patting himself down for his phone and wallet. “Shall we?” he asks tiredly. 

Ryan lets Shane pull him to his feet. He trades his phone for his keys, twirling them around his finger as they make their way to the door. Shane slides his feet into the ugly pair of slip-ons he usually wears whenever they fly somewhere. Then he plucks the least matching Lakers hat from the stack on the table by the door and sets it on Ryan’s head.

Ryan ducks to hide his smile. Though he must not quite manage it because Shane slings a heavy arm around him, resting it gently on his shoulders as they go. Ryan tucks his keys away and loops an arm around Shane’s waist without a second thought.

They’re both tired and sore, moving slowly, but still moving.

 

\--

 

Watching Shane unfold himself from a car is one of the funniest things Ryan has ever witnessed in his life. It literally never gets old. He looks like a daddy long leg stretching its limbs out in every possible direction to pry itself out of a too-tight space. He always moans and groans and twists himself around to make his back crack, and it’s still amusing, even now, knowing that he’s just doing it to play the part.

“I think you order little cars on purpose,” he gripes as their Lyft drives off. 

“You can’t prove that.”

Shane takes a look around at the parking lot that they’re standing in, at the beach just beyond, and the busy Pier set off to the side.

He slowly sets his hands on his hips. “Now, wait just a second,” he says suspiciously, “this doesn’t look like the office at all.”

Ryan huffs a laugh, shoving him lightly and watching as his eyes squint up when he smiles. 

“Nothing gets by you.”

“It’s my detective brain.”

Ryan reaches for Shane’s hand, fitting their fingers together in a loose hold that tightens as he guides Shane along. “What’s one more sick day, at this point?”

“It’s the difference between having a vacation this year and never leaving the office again.”

“We could always just leave, like the Try Guys.”

“We could do whatever you want.”

Shane squeezes his fingers, pulling him back until he can let go and loop his arm around Ryan’s neck. A kiss is pressed to the crown of his head and Ryan doesn’t try to hide the big, dumb smile that blooms on his face.

“Make people think we’re millionaires, then,” Ryan says as they step over the concrete hump that divides the parking lot from the beach, their feet shifting unevenly in the sand.

“Ahh, an abuse of power, I like it.”

Ryan grins, reaching up to hold onto Shane’s fingers, dangling over his shoulder. 

They make their way down toward the shore, past scattered sunbathers and tourists alike. They walk until they end up not too far from where Shane had met him, months ago, when Ryan was questioning his place in all of this.

It’s obvious that Shane recognizes it too because he stops in just about the same area, and says, “Our spot.”

“I wouldn’t really call it ‘our spot’,” Ryan says, lowering himself gingerly into the sun-warmed sand. 

Shane sits beside him, toeing out of his shoes and stretching out his stupidly long legs. Ryan takes the time to untie his laces before tucking his socks into them and setting them aside. When he looks back, Shane is watching him with something like fond exasperation on his face.

“You take better care of your shoes than you do me.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Ryan says, putting his fingertips against his chest, “I forgot you’re just an infinitely old supernatural creature, with untold life experience under his belt, who still needs babying.”

“I forgive you.”

Ryan lets out a huff that morphs into a laugh at the end. A yawn interrupts it.

“Am I boring you?”

“When are you not?”

Shane looks at him for a moment, his soft gaze sweeping over Ryan’s face and then down at his hands. He watches Ryan pick the edge of the scab on his middle knuckle until Ryan hisses as it comes loose. One giant hand covers his, and an arm fits around his shoulder, pulling him in and down as Shane leans back against the sand, bringing Ryan with him.

It’s not exactly a comfortable position. The sand is lumpy and the slightest bit damp, and it’s cold wherever they shift away the warm top layer; but Ryan settles his arm over Shane’s stomach and rests his cheek against his chest, closing his eyes. He could fall asleep like this, if it wasn’t such a stupid idea. 

If Shane was at his peak, then maybe he’d consider sleeping on a public beach with him, but as it stands, Ryan keeps opening his eyes to make sure he stays awake.

The thump of Shane’s heart is quiet but steady beneath his cheek, and he’s weirdly grateful that Shane is putting the energy into upholding his human facade so firmly when he could be using any and all reserves to heal himself faster. 

“Are you sure you’re gonna be okay?” he asks, after several, silent minutes.

“Yes, Ryan.”

“What if—“ 

“How are _you_ feeling?” Shane asks, cutting him off, squeezing his bicep as he does. He moves his head to look down at Ryan but Ryan keeps his gaze on a distant umbrella set up down the beach.

“I’m fine.”

There’s a slight pause before Shane responds. “You don’t have to be, you know.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say. I was possessed by a demon and it almost killed me and I don’t even know why. Or where it came from. Or if other demons might try it. I’m fucking freaked out of my goddamn mind and I don’t know what to do about it, so I’m just repressing until I can make sense of it.”

Shane shifts until Ryan’s head is on his bicep and they’re lying almost nose to nose, Shane’s long, rough fingers brushing the hair above his ear.

“I don’t even need to be human to tell you that’s not healthy.”

“And what am I supposed to do, Shane? Go to a shrink and tell ‘em that I was possessed over the weekend but I nearly choked myself to death on rock salt and puked a demon back up. Oh, and then my boyfriend, also a demon, came in and tore it to shit while I was half-unconscious on the floor.”

“Don’t be a dick.”

“Fuck you.”

Shane closes his eyes as a particularly strong breeze blows up off the water and over them. Ryan follows suit, swallowing to wet his throat and wincing at the lingering ache behind his Adam’s apple.

“Every soul feels different. Yours was appealing to that demon for one reason or another. I can’t give you a better explanation than that.”

Ryan cracks his eyes open to look at him but Shane’s are still shut, lightly, like he’s sleeping.

“Did I attract you with my irresistible soul?”

“Actually, it was your ass.”

Ryan sputters a laugh and Shane laughs too, opening his eyes to look at him, settling a hand on his cheek. 

“Jesus christ, you are seriously a terrible demon.” Shane’s shoulder shrugs and Ryan settles against his bicep again. “When did you just… stop doing demon shit?”

“I think my motivations fit the demon stereotype pretty well, actually.” At Ryan’s raised eyebrows, he goes on. “Selfishness. Everything I do is for myself."

"Debatable."

"I want to live as a human, so I did.”

“But you’re in love with me.”

“Yes.”

“How is that selfish?”

“How is it not?”

Ryan lets out a heavy exhale. “I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand you.”

The hand on his cheek skims over his shoulder and down to his side, pushing up under his t-shirt where it’s rucked up. His palm is warm. _Finally_ , Ryan thinks.

“I want you to love me back.”

“I do, you dipshit.”

“And I want you to speak so lovingly to me, always.”

Ryan reaches over to put his hand on Shane’s neck, drawing him in and kissing him gently, letting it linger.

“I love you.”

As he says the words, heat blooms in Ryan’s chest, all throughout the little niche he’s come to think of as purely _Shane_. Relief spreads like brushfire, fast and all-encompassing, and Shane’s eyes pinch shut like he’s in pain.

“Shane?”

“I’m good,” he says, a bit breathily. “I felt that. Whatever that was.”

“Just me being glad that your giant head didn’t get crushed, is all.”

“Well, keep thinking that. It felt better than your fear does.”

“Oh shit,” Ryan whispers, causing Shane to open his eyes again, brows lifting in question. “It’s like _Monsters Inc_.”

“What?”

Ryan lifts himself up onto his elbow. “Like how the monster world used screams for energy and then they discovered that laughter was like ten times as powerful.”

Shane stares at him like he’s grown another arm. And then he tips his head back and laughs. Loud and genuine, and so ridiculously contagious that Ryan can’t help but laugh too. It feels so easy, so much like _before_. It feels so good. Shane lifts both hands to wipe at his leaking eyes, as he settles, and then wraps both hands around the one that Ryan has set on his chest.

“Yes, Ryan. It’s just like that. Our relationship is a dead ringer for a Pixar movie.”

“Well, as long as you see it too, and it’s not just me.”

“The perfect analogy,” Shane says, drumming his fingers against the back of Ryan’s hand.

He waits, watching Ryan and the sky in turn, full of seemingly endless patience, until Ryan settles down against his side again. They should probably call in to work, at some point, and let someone know that they aren’t going to be in today. He doesn’t have the energy for it, though. He doesn’t want to think about the Unsolved Network, or editing footage, or recording voiceovers. He wants to just lie here and feel the warmth slowly return to Shane’s body, and the link between them strengthen as it pulses to life again.

Closing his eyes, he listens to the steady roll of waves breaking on the sand, feeling the heat of the sun on his face. He feels pretty good, right now, all things considered.

A finger taps at his temple. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing. Just—work.” Shane makes a noise of affirmation.

“What about it?” he asks when Ryan doesn’t volunteer anything further.

“I don’t know.”

“Unsolved or work in general?”

Ryan shrugs. “I don’t know,” he repeats. “Unsolved, I guess.”

Shane’s fingers brush back and forth against the shell of his ear. “Do you want to keep doing it?”

In all the time that Ryan has been avoiding thinking about his brief possession by a demon, and the pain and fear that came before and after it, he’s been thinking about Unsolved. A lot. And he still hasn’t come up with a game plan for it. He doesn’t know how he wants to proceed. Or if he even wants to carry on with it at all.

“I don’t know,” he says honestly, feeling the heat of Shane’s belly against his palm. He watches the waves roll in, over and over, cresting and breaking on the shore. He listens to the distant screams of children, playing in the water and on the pier. Ryan closes his eyes.

“We don’t have to keep doing it.”

“I know.”

“We can take some time off. Or you can. I don’t think your head is on straight, right now.”

Ryan huffs. “Thanks.”

“You know I’m right. You’ll have to deal with it, one way or another.”

“I know.” 

And Ryan does know. He knows that he’s going to have to face what he went through, at some point, and he’s going to have to do it mostly on his own. He can’t seek help for this, to talk it out with anyone aside from Shane. There’s a creeping feeling at the base of his spine that feels like some inevitable degree of PTSD is in his future.

There is no rationalizing what he’s gone through.

Warm, dry lips press against his forehead. “I’m with you,” Shane reminds him, quietly.

Ryan releases a shaky breath. “I know.” He huffs a tired laugh as he opens his burning eyes again. “I’m really glad I can’t have nightmares, anymore.”

“Me too.”

Ryan hears the unspoken _I love you_ in the words and he thinks it right back, too tired to go through the effort of saying it out loud. Shane knows, though; he always knows.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah?”

Ryan swallows to wet his throat. “What happens when I die?” He feels the deeper breath that lifts Shane’s chest. “What will _you_ do, I mean?”

Shane’s fingers trail over the exposed skin of his arm as he mulls over his reply.

“I’ll find you,” he says, his voice quiet and certain.

Ryan knows that if he asks for more, that he won’t get it; Shane’s only cryptic when he needs to be. Still, despite the brevity of the answer, it eases the overwhelming tightness in his chest.

The wind blowing up off the water smells like salt and distant memories of childhood summers. He closes his eyes again, as the breeze picks up and starts blowing sand around. Shane’s fingers run through his hair and over his arm, making his skin prickle with goosebumps. The tightness of the bond has eased, soothed by either their closeness or the passing of what nearly tore it in two. Ryan takes a breath and lets his body relax. It feels like time is almost standing still, holding its breath while the two of them lie here, together.

It’s so simple, it’s so easy. Ryan is shaken but he isn’t afraid, and he trusts Shane implicitly. He knows that Shane must do the same. It feels like all he needs, in this moment. And maybe it is.

They still have so much to talk about, to work through, a lot to decide about themselves and their future. But for now, this is enough.

It’s good. And Ryan is content.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for coming along on the demon Shane ride; it's been real.
> 
> I love and appreciate comments and kudos so much. Let me know what you think ❤


End file.
